FusionFall: A Hero's Story
by GreenAce
Summary: Mark Emeron was just a normal kid, until a series of events led him to become an icon, a hero to help his world and friends battle against the Fusions, a powerful, world-consuming alien species.
1. The Time Travel Incident

**Hey, everyone! Welcome to my first fanfiction ever! **

**First off, this story is based on a game loved by many Cartoon Network fans called "FusionFall", but this story will be almost completely different from the game itself. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story, and you can review/favorite it if you want! Now let's jump right into the story!**

* * *

In the faraway Andromeda Galaxy, there is a world that is much different from ours. This planet is about the size of our Earth, and its name is Arkadex, which was based on "Dexter's Ark", a prophecy created by the early humans there. It is a world where humans and anthropomorphic animals co-exist together, where heroes and villains battle it out over giant cities, where imagination can actually **create **beings, where magic actually exists, and where the levels of technology were so high that things people would normally consider science fiction were just starting to become true.

The main capital of Arkadex was a metropolitan city named Townsville, which was the main hub of all transportation, heroes, and technology on Arkadex. But Townsville was also the hub of many different villains. Villains such as a megalomaniacal green mutant monkey, a strange red demonic creature, an space alien tyrant, and gigantic monsters were just a small percentage of all the villains. Thankfully, the heroes could stop all of them.

All the technology that spewed across Arkadex came from a place called Technology Square, or Tech Square for short, which was located in the northeast part of Townsville. Tech Square was the location of two rival science companies: Dexlabs and Mandark Industries. Dexlabs, the more popular of the two, was run by the boy genius named Dexter, who originally lived in Genius Grove, but moved his lab to Tech Square to expand his company. His massive intelligence (it was around 10x as large as Einstein's) allowed him to create technology that most people would have not even imagined to be possible. Shortly after his company was founded, he threw modern technology right out the door, creating a new age of technology called the "Advancement Age".

But over the past few months, Dexter was constantly locking himself inside his lab, and whenever anyone did see him, he was normally muttering to himself while drawing extremely complicated equations that only he could understand, and he normally didn't want anyone to be near him. Eventually, people began to get suspicious as to what Dexter was doing, but some people believed he was working on something great, which he indeed was.

There were other cities other than Townsville, such as Marquee and Bravo. All those cities combined with Townsville forms a great metropolis called Downtown, taking up almost half of the entire southwestern continent. But it's in the eastern section of Townsville that our story begins.

* * *

It was a bright and beautiful June afternoon in Townsville. The sun shone onto the road and towering buildings, making them glow in the sunlight. As groups of hovercars sped northward along the road, some turned toward Offworld Plaza. Of all the people on the street, one specific 14-year old boy exited one of the apartment buildings along the street. This 14-year old boy had bright blonde hair, and wore a black-and-green lined long-sleeved shirt, with a white vest on top. He also wore dark green pants with bright green lines going down the sides, and green shoes with black straps. He also wore shaded glasses which covered his eyes.

"Where is Dexlabs?" the kid said as he pulled out a silver thin device. He pressed the central button, and a holographic map of Townsville popped up. The kid said, "Directions from 125 Emerald Street to Dexlabs,", and a holographic screen popped up. The kid muttered the directions to himself,

"OK, continue northward past Mojo's Volcano, and head northeast from there."

The kid turned off the holographic screen and put the device in his right pocket. As the kid continued walking southward, he took out a letter from his other pocket.

This letter was given to the kid from Dexter himself, not personally, however. When the kid and his parents were in their apartment, the letter suddenly teleported into the hands of the kid's dad, who was an employee of Dexlabs. When he opened it, the letter said,

**To: Harrison Emeron, 125 Emerald St., Townsville, 2G**

**From: Dexter, 1 Science St., Technology Square**

Dexlabs is pleased to inform you that your child, Marcus Emeron, has been accepted as the volunteer for the prototype of my time machine experiment. Don't worry, Harry, I can assure you that this experiment is 100% safe. Dexlabs also ensures that the farthest into the future Marcus will teleport will be a few days, and the slightest amount of time passed should be a few hours. We also trust you to inform any friends that Marcus has of this experiment.

* * *

Even though the kid's first name was Marcus, many people called him Mark, so let's do so too. Continuing on, after a bit of walking, Mark came to a small park. But it wasn't ordinary, because he looked up to see a towering observatory peaked on top of Townsville's City Volcano. Right when he saw it, he felt a major feeling of hatred towards the villain whose base of operations was inside the observatory, Mojo Jojo.

Mojo Jojo was a mutant monkey who originally worked with Prof. Utonium, but after the sudden creation of the Powerpuff Girls, a trio of powerful superheroes, came much smarter, and turned evil due to "neglect", or at least that's how he put it. He was one of the most persistent villains on the surface of Arkadex, constantly attempting to destroy Townsville or take over the world, always being prevented by the Powerpuff Girls. But a few months ago, during a battle with Mojo Jojo during a storm, Buttercup, the green-clad member of the Powerpuff Girls, had been knocked into the ocean, and was never seen since. Even though the Mayor of Townsville had sent search parties multiple times, every search had no results. Mark decided to take it out of his mind and continue toward Tech Square.

After walking northeast for about a half-hour (walking time), Mark could see Dexlabs down the road. Dexlabs had a very interesting structural design, and, interestingly enough, a house was on top. He quickly ran toward the sidewalk, noticing a couple Dexbots rolling past him. Dexbots were the robotic helpers of Dexter, normally either situated throughout Downtown and Genius Grove, or helping Dexter with an experiment. After the Dexbots and Mark quickly exchanged greetings, Mark found himself outside Dexlabs.

Mark looked across the gigantic garden lined by giant solar panels around its border to see the rival company of Dexlabs, Mandark Industries, which was created by Mandark, Dexter's long-time rival. Just like Dexlabs, they had robot helpers similar to Dexbots, except they were red and black instead of blue and white. Those bots were called Mandroids.

Mark always thought Mandark was a mad scientist, due to his persistence to be better than Dexter. Mandark was probably watch Mark watching him right now, and pondering what he was doing here. Mandark had made other technological breakthroughs, but he had not known about Dexter's time travel experiment. When Mark looked behind himself and saw that a security camera above Dexlabs' front door was looking straight at him, he knew that somebody must be watching him, either Dexter or a Dexbot. If it was either, then he knew that someone was coming, so he walked toward the front doors, which opened up instantly.

Mark walked into the white lobby room, which he had been in a few times on Dexlabs' annual "Bring your Son to Work Day", which occurs right after "Bring your Daughter to Work Day". Mark then looked at a glass cabinet on the right of the room, which said, "Best Inventions of Last Year". The inventions he saw were things like wormhole blasters, laser propellers, black hole destroyers, and an unnamed vortex machine, which Mark believed to secretly be a copy of the time machine engine.

"You have an appointment?" a robotic voice said. When Mark turned to where the voice was emanating, he could see a iron desk with a Dexbot behind it.

"Uh, yeah. I've arrived for the time machine experiment."

"Let's see," the Dexbot said as it pressed a button on the underside of the desk. Almost instantly after, some kind of camera instantly popped out of the ceiling. Mark instantly knew he was gonna be identified via facial scanner, so he took off his shaded glasses to reveal his emerald green eyes. Emerald green eyes were a common trait in Mark's family, and he was glad to have it too. Suddenly, a blue light was projected onto Mark's face. Mark tried as hard as he could not to close his eyes, and after around 5 seconds, he could hear the scanner saying,

"_**Identifying... Identified." **_

"_**Searching through Arkadex Database for Match... Match Found... Marcus Xavier Emeron."**_

"_**Searching through Dexlabs Database... Time Machine Experiment Volunteer: Marcus Xavier Emeron." **_

Once the light stopped, and the scanner went back into the ceiling, Mark's vision was very yellow for a couple seconds.

"You may wait in one of the waiting room chairs. I shall inform Dexter that you have arrived," the Dexbot said before the wall behind it split open, and the Dexbot turned around and went forward, before the walls closed up again.

Mark walked to his left toward the waiting rooms. Mark sat in on of the blue couches, and looked at the clock on the wall, which said: **3:00**. He waited for about five minutes, wondering how they would use the time travel mechanics. Suddenly he heard something coming from his left.

"Sorry about the wait," he heard a voice coming from his left saying. "Just putting some final touches on the time machine."

When Mark looked his to left, he could see a redheaded boy walking up to him, from a passageway opening out of the wall. This boy seemed to be about ten to eleven years old, he wore a white lab coat, and he was shorter than Mark, about 4'8" when Mark was about 5'7". He also wore big glasses around his eyes. Mark knew this kid was Dexter, as he had seen him before when visiting last year's science convention.

"It's fine, Dex," Mark said.

"Interesting nickname- Anyways, as you know, I have created the first time-stream teleportation technology of its kind. A time machine, to be precise!" Dexter said with confidence. "The quantum state of matter in which you take up will be sent through a hole in Space-Time-"

"OK, OK, I think I get it," Mark said. "No offense."

"None taken. OK then, let's go," Dexter said, followed by the same passageway that Dexter came through opening quickly, and the two walked in.

After the metallic plates of the wall quickly closed, the two walked down the bright blue hallways, lit up by seemingly nothing. More inventions seemed to be floating in mid-air. Mark wanted to ask, but at the same time, he wanted to keep his mouth shut to avoid a gigantic lecture. Suddenly, he seemed to hear a humming sound. When Mark looked forward, he could see some kind of partially holographic floating robot. This robot seemed to awkwardly have many humanoid features, including holographic hair. Its legs seemed to be fused together, and what would be its feet seemed to be replaced with what looked like an upside-down UFO.

The robot began to speak, "I see the volunteer has arrived." When the robot saw Mark had a confused facial expression, the robot continued speaking.

"Excuse me, let me introduce myself. I am Computress, Dexter's personal assistant and overseer of production in Dexlabs. Before Dexter moved to Tech Square 3 years ago, I was Computor, who controlled the entire lab without a mobile body. But when Dexter moved from Genius Grove to Tech Square, instead of moving Computor's hardrives from lab to lab, he transferred all of Computor's hardrives into a mobile body, which is now me."

"Oh, she also helps me with a couple of important experiments sometimes," Dexter added. Mark sorta understood why Dexter referred to Computress as a "she", but at the same time, he didn't. But he went along with it anyway.

"Let's get going, all the Dexbots are waiting," Computress said before turning around and floating toward a gigantic metal door with a force field around it. Dexter quickly walked and placed his pointer finger on a scanner, before moving to an eye scanner and a voice scanner.

"**INDENTIFICATION CONFIRMED... WELCOME, DEXTER."**

The force field quickly shut down, and the door swung open, thankfully not toward the three. When Mark walked in, he could see a ramp leading downward into a gigantic room. All the Dexbots in the room looked around to see the three at the top of the ramp.

As Dexter, Computress and Mark walked down the ramp, Mark looked around what seemed to be the main room. There seemed to be a lot of inventions throughout the place, as well as some sort of gigantic machine in the center of the gigantic room, which Mark guessed to be the time machine. This machine had a spherical geometric design, and two antennae moving out of the top. There were many wires and pipes connecting to the machine, and Mark wondered how they were planning to activate it. Mark could see his dad among small groups of employees inside safe observation rooms, but he focused on the time machine. Computress quickly hovered to a control panel, and pressed a button, which opened the hatch. Mark was about to go in, but suddenly Dexter stopped him.

"Hold on, Mark, you need this," Dexter said, as he handed him some kind of reddish watch, which instantly strapped itself around Mark's left wrist, and its central area began to glow blue.

"Why do I need this?" Mark asked.

"That's your communicator, and also a locator beacon. You'll need it after the time travel, because Computress will be messaged of your arrival in the future. You can go on in now." A group of Dexbots wheeled in with a stepladder, and placed it in front of entrance to the time machine. As Mark walked up the stepladder, he felt a sense of hesitation, that he didn't want to go in.

"_I'm...I'm... should I go in?"_

Suddenly the other corner of his mind came to help. _"MARK! Don't give up now! You've come this far! You know there's no way back! Take it all the way!"_

After hearing that message, Mark threw that sense of hesitation out of his mind, and he walked into the time machine. As soon as he heard the impenetrable glass door shut tight, Mark knew there was no going back. He turned around to see Dexter at the control panel Computress was at, except it seemed to have moved to the front of the time machine now.

"Can you hear me in there?" Dexter said while peering into the machine.

"Yes, I can hear you just fine," Mark said, as he looked around the interior. He noticed that he could see the outline of a clock, with the first 12 roman numerals in their appropriate positions. The inside of the time machine also consisted of a turquoise color. Mark looked through the large front window to see his dad in the central observation room, talking with other employees, frequently smiling at Mark. Suddenly, a giant scanner popped out of the ceiling, and scanned the entire interior of the machine, including Mark. When Mark looked outward from the time machine, he could see a monitor showing the percentage of scanning in the time machine, which seemed to rise rapidly, by about 75% per half-second. By the time Mark noticed it, the scanner had already completed processing.

While Mark was waiting to go forward in time, something crossing the doorway entrance caught his eye. A... girl crossing the door entrance and peering into the room?

Mark's dad, Harry Emeron, had also seen the same thing. He didn't know if he was seeing things, or if it was some sort of experiment.

"What was that?" Harry said, pointing at the entrance to the main room.

"What do you mean?" another employee said.

"I thought I saw a girl, outside the main room door."

"Wait, **her**?"

"Welcome to the first experiment of time travel technology by Dexlabs, everyone!" Dexter said, getting applause from the Dexbots and lab assistants, and getting the attention of Harry and the other assistants. "After this experiment, time travel will have officially been experimented!"

After more applause, he continued, "Now, with the help of our volunteer, Marcus Emeron, Dexlabs shall make history!"

After another boom of applause, Dexter turned around and began to press buttons on the control panel. But Mark saw something different. Mark noticed a blonde-haired teenage girl with pigtails, in a pink dress, sneaking down the entrance ramp with a very curious expression on her face.

As the time machine's main engine began to power up and produce rather loud noise, Mark's dad, in the observation rooms, did not know what the girl was going to do.

"Dex... Dexter?" Mark asked as he pointed to the girl. But Dexter was so focused on the experiment that he didn't even hear Mark. Mark tried to yell his name multiple times, but to no avail. He even tried to pound on the machine's glass door, but even that didn't work.

"COMPUTRESS!" Mark screamed at the top of his lungs. Due to Computress's highly sensitive hearing system, Computress managed to hear Mark. Mark instantly pointed to the secondary system of buttons for the time capsule, where Dee Dee was looking at all the buttons. When Computress saw the girl, she tried to notify Dexter, but Dexter could barely hear her, so he went on with the operation.

"Prepare for launch!" Dexter said with a smile on his face, unknown of what was about to happen. "Three...two..."

"Ooooh! What does this button do?" the girl said.

Of everything he had not heard from the girl, Dexter heard that question. His eyes instantly widened, and he began to emit a facial expression of panic. It was the worst thing he could have heard during a crucial experiment like this. When he turned to the girl, she was already pressing buttons on the secondary control panel, which, if pressed at the wrong time, could resort in disaster. Suddenly his facial expression turned to fright, and then anger.

"DEE DEE?! GET OUT OF MY LABORATORY NOW! HOW DID YOU EVEN GET IN HERE?! DON'T PULL THAT LEVER-"

But it was too late. Dee Dee had already pressed many buttons involving Space-Time travel length, and pulled the High-Energy Output Lever

Suddenly, alarms began to go off throughout the room. The Dexbots were all in panic, and the people in the observation rooms were in terror.

Meanwhile, the time machine began to spark. Steam pipes outside and inside the machine were breaking, and steam began to cover the time machine and cloud Mark's vision. Lights were flickering throughout the room, and the time machine's inner lighting system began to lose control. Mark didn't have a clue of what Dee Dee had done, but it must have been drastically bad.

Mark's dad quickly ran through the entrance to the main room, and down to the time machine, which had begun to shake violently. Mark could barely keep his balance, with all the tremors inside the machine. Then, a really powerful tremor flipped the time machine upside-down. Mark quickly fell to the ceiling, and tried to balance himself, even though the time-machine was going insane.

"What can you do?" Mark's dad asked in terror, afraid that Mark was in danger.

"I don't know! Dee Dee's frozen the controls! DEXBOTS, RESTRAIN HER!" Dexter screamed. Dexbots instantly stopped Dee Dee and pulled her away from the control panel, and placed her in a plasma containment field. Even though Dee Dee couldn't get out, she still was laughing a lot.

Dexter ran over to the control panel, as the time machine flipped itself again, and began to hover in the air. Nobody in the room could see Mark, but only the silhouette of the time machine surrounded in the cloud of steam. Since Mark couldn't see anything, due to all the steam, and that the time machine was completely dark, he just waited for the time travel to occur while he lay on the floor of the time machine.

"HOW CAN WE STOP THIS?" Mark's dad screamed.

"Hurry! Disconnect all the energy wires!" Dexter said.

Sparks were flying out of the time machine, and the machine was collapsing on itself as it began to glow brighter and brighter. Before anyone could even get to the energy wires, a blinding ray of white light enveloped the entire room, with enough strength for the light to be seen from space. When the multiple pulses of light finally receded, all that was left of the time machine was only a couple fried bolts, the lights exploded, and darkness covered the room.

Dexter pounded his hand on the control panel in anger, nearly cracking it. He didn't even care about his valuable work being lost. All he worried about was Mark's safety. Meanwhile, Dee Dee had lost all her laughter. The containment unit instantly opened, and Dee Dee fell onto the floor. But she didn't get up, or run away in laughter. She just sat there, staring in fear. It was almost like her brother wasn't even there, because his personality had never been like this.

"DEE DEE!" Dexter screamed as he turned around. "WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU? EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN' TIME I HAVE AN IMPORTANT EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS, I CAN'T HAVE IT SUCCESSFUL! NO! **YOU **HAVE TO ALWAYS SCREW IT UP! HOW DID YOU EVEN GET IN HERE?!"

Dee Dee tried to speak, while trembling with fear. "You... you left the door open..."

Dexter turned around to actually see the main room door had been left open the whole time.

"OK, that was an error on my part, **but you're still**-"

"No, Dexter, please! I'm sorry!"

"Oh yeah, like I'm supposed to believe that!" Dexter yelled. "Do you have any idea how long I worked on that machine? But that's nothing compared to the **real** reason I'm mad at you!"

"I'm-I'm really, really sorry, Dexter-"

"**REALLY**?!" Dexter said. "**TELL THAT TO HIM**!" Dexter pointed at Mark's dad, who walked toward Dee Dee with an even angrier look on his face. When he screamed at her, he sounded almost demonic.

"**DO YOU HAVE ANY CLUE WHAT YOU'VE DONE! BECAUSE OF YOU, MY SON IS GOING TO FLY TO AN UNKNOWN TIME!**" He put his face in his hands before screaming again. "**You... are the worst! I... I will... You're a disgrace to humanity! MY SON'S LIFE IS IN DANGER BECAUSE OF YOU! I... I... hate-**"

"OK, Harry, I think that's enough, but she still deserves punishment!" Dexter said. He pointed to a squad of Dexbots. "You two, get her out of here now! Add extra security measures to every single entrance!"

Two Dexbots instantly picked up Dee Dee, who was now crying, and wheeled her up the ramp.

"And make sure to keep an eye on her, Dexbots!" Dexter said as the main doors slammed shut. As he walked out of the room through another door, he said, "Computress, how far did the subject go into the future?"

After a pause, Computress said, "Based on the charging time, the buttons Dee Dee had pressed, and the brightness of the travel, Mark has gone forward in time by approximately 1 year and 234 days..."

* * *

**Well, I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! What do you think will happen to Mark? Where do you think he'll end up? All these questions will be answered in the next chapter, which will be released on Sunday! Until then, bye!**


	2. Dark Future

**Yo, everyone! I'm here again, to post the second chapter of this fanfiction, on Sunday, as promised. Now, for this chapter, I'm gonna have insanely long author notes, so let's start this thing!**

* * *

Everything began to reverse, and white flashes took up Mark's vision. When the bright flashes were not there, Mark could see something going on in Dexlabs, in sped up reverse mode, which he could barely see because the time machine kept on tumbling around. As Mark tumbled throughout the time machine, he constantly could not think completely without blocking himself from the incoming walls. The only view that Mark had was through the glass porthole, which was slowly cracking, and Mark could barely see what was happening through the bright flashes. The last thing Mark could see before going completely unconscious was that everything outside turned green.

* * *

"Ugh...Where am I- no, _when _am I?" Mark muttered as he slowly opened his eyes to see green grass. He clearly was not in Dexlabs anymore, but in the center of Tech Square. At least he thought he was. Suddenly, he heard a massive explosion, so he quickly got up and looked forward, but instead of seeing the normal metropolis of Townsville, everything was different. Buildings were in ruins, collapsed, and some were even sunk into the ground. As he observed the place around him, he could see bits of the time machine scattered everywhere. When he looked behind himself, he realized he was on top of a hillside, and when he looked down it, he saw other land that looked like the ruins of Mandark Industries, but beyond that was a complete ocean of green liquid.

"What the heck happened here?" Mark said to himself as he stumbled across the only OK bit of nature in Tech Square that he could see. When he looked up, the sky was not the bright blue it usually was. Instead, it was an ominous green. But when a cloud in the sky moved to the left, Mark was officially speechless. What he saw was some kind of giant cluster of planets, where the original or center of this cluster was a giant dark green sphere. He noticed that some strange green gooey material held planets to other planets or planets to the center. He could see gigantic rocky planets, and even a gas giant similar to Jupiter.

Mark was dumbfounded about everything that was happening. He finally had the nerve to say, "I must be in an alternate universe! There's no way this could happen in so little time!" Suddenly, he heard a noise coming from his communicator.

"Bzzt- Mark, are you reading me?" a voice sounding like Computress spoke.

"I'm here, Computress. What the heck happened back there?"

"You remember the girl back in the lab? That was Dee Dee, Dexter's curious, though admittedly annoying, sister. Her mishaps caused you to be sent much farther into the future than Dexter had intended, by about 1 year and 234 days."

"THAT FAR? Dee Dee must really have screwed up the time jump. But what the heck has happened here?"

"I can't really explain right now, as we are in the middle of a problematic situation, but your tone of voice makes me believe that you are in trouble. Get to Dexlabs immedia-"

Once the communicator shorted out, Mark looked up and realized there was no way he was ever gonna get to Dexlabs. The entire land that Dexlabs was on had been raised extensively to the point where the only way to get there was by air transportation, and he didn't see anything involving that.

"Great, just great," Mark said as he took everything in. The only thing he knew was: he was in some kind of post-apocalyptic future, everything is green, and there's nothing he can do. After Mark heard another explosion, he looked to his right and saw some fleet of warships blasting at a flock of creatures that looked like giant mechanical bats.

"If those ships find me, I can get to Dexlabs!" Mark exclaimed, and he tried to get their attention by yelling and jumping, but to no avail.

Suddenly he heard a weird noise, so he turned around to see a strange green glowing pod was hanging from a tree. It was covered with vines, and the inside seemed to contain more of the green liquid stuff. Mark had no clue what it did, so he walked over to it. When Mark touched it, pain zoomed through Mark's body, and Mark quickly reflexed his hand away from the pod.

"OW! WHAT THE HECK!" Mark said as he grasped his hand, which was slightly burnt. "OK, I don't want to touch that..."

Suddenly, the pod began to drop the same green goo he had seen in the ocean. But this goo was different. It began to take a sphere-like form, an antennae-like point began to come out of the back of its head, and then red glowing eyes began to appear. Then more of the same thing began to drop down. They looked at Mark, and then started lunging at him. Not having any weapons to defend himself, Mark ran, and even climbed up one or two ledges, until he suddenly tripped and fell on the ground. Thinking his death was inevitable, he waited, and right when he thought he was done for, nothing happened.

Instead, when he opened his eyes, the creatures were piles of green goo. When he got up, he saw two people rushing toward him. One was a black-haired girl with a dark blue shirt and shorts and a red hat, and the other was a brown-haired boy. This boy wore a green jacket with a white stripe going down the right side, with a black circle with the white number 10, over a black undershirt. He also wore blue jeans and black sneakers. Mark instantly recognized the boy, because he was Ben Tennyson, one of the Arkadex's most popular superheroes. Not to mention that he had a green device covering his left wrist, called the Ultimatrix, which allowed him to transform into every alien being possible.

"Whoa! Where did you come from! I thought we already finished evacuation procedures!" said the girl.

"Come on, Numbuh Five, let's cut this guy some slack!" Ben said. "He probably wasn't found in the rubble and just now recovered!"

"Wait, what's going on here?!" Mark asked in confusion.

"WHAT? You don't know what's been happening for the past year?" Numbuh Five said, looking surprised at what Mark said.

"Well, newsflash, I wasn't here during that time, I time jumped!"

"Time jumped?" Ben asked.

After a second or two, Numbuh Five said, "Hey, I know you! You're the kid from the past Dexter told us about! Well, you're in a world of trouble now..."

"Yeah, I guess so... So, what are we doing now?" Mark asked.

"Well, Dexter did say for us to meet up with the others at Dexlabs," Numbuh Five said. "But I must say I've been waiting to meet you. As he said, I'm Numbuh Five. But it's OK to call me Abby. And here's-"

"I know, Ben Tennyson," Mark said as he shook Ben's hand. "Great to meet-"

**ROAR!**

"Oh, man!" said Ben as everyone turned toward the time machine ruins. What looked like a blue three-headed robotic dog of some kind was standing on top of a far-away collapsed building, before it leapt into the air. Numbuh Five attempted to blast it, but it hit a shielded part of its armor. When the three-headed robo-dog landed, the shockwave was powerful enough to knock the three down. Once it landed, more of the same type of creature began to appear behind hills and collapsed buildings.

"It's a group of Cyberus! C'mon, let's destroy em'!" Ben said, before slamming his hand onto the Ultimatrix, causing a green light to engulf Ben. As the light faded away, Mark saw Ben had turned into a green, swamplike, humanoid creature, which began to conjure fire in its hands. The creature then shouted,

"_**SWAMPFIRE!"**_

"Come on, let's back up Ben! Take this Lightning Gun!" Numbuh Five said as she handed him a type of orange rifle gun, with a green crystal as its power core. When Mark attempted to fire it, it sent an orange blast of plasma at the green pod hanging from the tree, blowing it up, and sending all the green goo to fall onto the ground.

After saving Numbuh Five and Ben from a couple of sneaky Cyberus from a ledge up top, Mark saw one of the Cyberus running at him from his right. In response, Mark quickly turned, and managed to blast the Cyberus's core, causing it to explode in half. When the Cyberus continued crawling toward him, he fired the gun at the Cyberus three headsBut it still landed on top of him. Mark managed to shove the dead Cyberus body off of him before the thing began to turn into another pile of that green goo.

"Yes, we did it!" Ben said in Swampfire's voice, as he exploded the final Cyberus in the group.

Numbuh Five turned to Mark and said, "Nice shooting, by the way, kid-"

"My name is Mark," Mark interrupted.

"OK, then, Mark," Ben said, still in Swampfire form. "We understand that you had time jumped through this whole war until now, and we know you want answers. We'd love to tell you, but first, we've gotta get out-"

**ROAR! **

A giant cluster of roars started to come from where the Cyberus previously were. When Ben, Numbuh Five, and Mark looked over there, they saw dozens of Cyberus slowly prowling toward them. When Ben blasted a fireball at one of them, the Cyberus was partially burnt, but it still moved forward.

"RUN!" Numbuh Five screamed.

Mark, Ben, and Numbuh Five began to run up the ramp. When Mark began to look back, he saw at least 50 Cyberus running at him. When he saw this, Mark got some kind of major adrenaline boost, because he was the first to get up the ramp, even when Swampfire was blasting plumes of fire to launch himself into the air. When Mark got up, he quickly looked to his left, and saw a collapsed gigantic solar panel, and more Cyberus began appearing from behind the panel. And when Mark looked to the right, he saw more collapsed buildings, but one acted as a bridge to the raised land Dexlabs stood on, and some kind of dark metal beam seemed to go from the top of the raised land to the collapsed building.

"THAT WAY!" Mark yelled as he ran toward the collapsed building bridge. Ben and Numbuh Five decided to follow him. By the time Numbuh Five and Ben got to Mark, he was already trying to climb the dark metal beam, but when he realized there were no surfaces to grab onto, he began to lose hope. And when the three turned around, they saw tons of Cyberus slowly moving towards them. After blasting a wave of fire at the nearby Cyberus, Ben slammed his hand on the Omnitrix symbol on his chest, causing a wave of green light to go across him, causing him to turn browner, and have blue gel-like bubbles on his back and arms.

"Ultimate Swampfire!" Ben said as he began to blast blue fireballs at the Cyberus, incinerating them instantly, but more and more Cyberus were approached. Eventually, Ben began to glow green and turned back into Swampfire before turning back into normal Ben.

"OH, COME ON!" Ben said as he continuously slammed his hand on the watch again, but to no avail. Mark quickly backed toward the wall in fear, not knowing what would happen to them. Expecting death, Mark closed his eyes and waited, but after 10 seconds and a sudden silence, Mark opened his eyes and saw that the groups of Cyberus were backing away, for some reason. Maybe they were being called back by their commander, whoever it was.

Mark was going to sigh with relief, but that thought instantly disappeared when he saw a bigger version of the Cyberus prowling toward them.

"Oh no, a Cyberus Zero," said Numbuh Five.

Mark stood there, speechless, because the Cyberus Zero was about four times as big as them. As the Cyberus Zero prowled toward the group, its massive, metallic paws cracked the surface of the collapsed building. After it let out a huge roar, it suddenly stopped. Before it could even turn right, laser blasts started blasting at the Cyberus Zero, and sent if flying off the building bridge, and into the crevice below, which was filled with the green liquid.

"Whoa!" Mark said as he looked to his left. What he saw was a dark green kind of ship with red tail flaps which seemed to have jets attached them, similar to the ones he saw battling the giant bats before. It landed next to the collapsed solar panel.

"That must be Numbuh Two!" Numbuh Five said, before they started running toward the dark green ship. Mark followed them, and after he jumped off the building, the remains, along with the dark metal beam, collapsed into the crevice. Once they got to the ship, a door on the ship began to open, and someone walked out. The person was a kid with a blue shirt and brown overalls. He also wore a brown pilot cap with yellow goggles, which had the number 2 on it.

Ben started the conversation with Numbuh Two. He was still panting after all the running.

"Thanks for saving us, Numbuh Two. Is the next battle plan meeting scheduled?"

"Yes, people are gathering right now at Dexlabs."

Ben and Numbuh Five began to pile onto the green ship. As Mark was about to get on the ship too, he heard a voice, and it wasn't Numbuh Two's.

"Numbuh Two! We've got a problem!" the voice said before he heard a zooming noise. When Mark turned around, he saw a green streak of light before it landed on the ground. Mark instantly recognized the black-haired girl in a green dress with a horizontal black stripe across the middle. It was Buttercup! Mark was amazed, because he thought she would be dead by now after the battle with Mojo Jojo.

Buttercup said, "Dexter's been kidnapped by the enemy! We don't know where he is! Heroes are already meeting up at Dexlabs."

"Agreed!" Numbuh Two said as Buttercup flew off toward Dexlabs. "We'll be right there!"

"OK, kid, let's get going," Numbuh Two said, as a green streak of light flew upwards and toward Dexlabs. After Mark and Numbuh Two got onto the ship, it began to rise. After reaching full power, the ship accelerated, and it flew off toward Dexlabs.

Mark sat at the passenger seat of the dark green ship, but felt like he needed to ask something, so he asked, "What kind of ship is this?"

"Oh, this is the SCAMPER, or **S**habby **C**amper **A**ctually **M**akes **P**erfect **E**mergency **R**escuemabob," said Numbuh Two. Mark didn't really understand the acronym, but Numbuh Two must have liked it, because he could hear him chuckle a bit after saying it. Right after Numbuh Two chuckled, however, the SCAMPER suddenly maneuvered, and multiple metallic shrieks could be heard.

"We've got trouble!" Numbuh Two yelled, as the SCAMPER began to shake. When Mark looked out the passenger's window, he saw the same giant mechanical bat he had seen from before, except they were much closer. On closer inspection, they seemed to be made out of the exact same metal the Cyberus were made out of.

"WHAT ARE THEY?" Mark said.

"Oh, those guys are Tech Wings," Ben said. "When Fuse invaded Dexlabs, he mutated Dexter's inventions into many different things, such as...well, them."

Suddenly, the Ultimatrix began to glow green, indicating that it's ready for transformation. Noticing this, Ben walked toward the door of the SCAMPER and opened it, causing a current of air to go throughout the SCAMPER. But Ben stood there. Mark was glad he strapped himself in. He saw the Ultimatrix glow, so he knew he had to transform. Ben slammed his hand onto the Ultimatrix symbol, causing a green light to engulf him.

"_**Jetray!"**_ a strange-sounding voice yelled, as the light faded. Ben had now turned into some kind of red, humanoid, creature with two black stripes going down its back. As Ben spread his alien arms out, Mark saw that there were yellow wings between the arms and torso, similar to flying squirrels. He also had two yellow horns in a crown-shaped metal bone on his head. Ben flew out of the SCAMPER and started fighting the Tech Wings, blowing up neuroshock lasers out of his eyes. As Mark continued looking through the cockpit window, he saw a squad of Tech Wings, but the middle one was about twice as big.

"Why is there always a big version of a monster with the normal ones?" Mark said.

"Well," Numbuh Five said, "Fuse's groups of monsters always have a squad leader, which looks the same, but is much bigger than the normal monster. In this case-"

The SCAMPER shook again.

"...it's the GigaTech Wing."

"Mark!" Numbuh Two said. "I don't have enough firepower to take out all of these at once! I need you to help!"

"Wait," Mark said. "I'm going to stand outside the SCAMPER, firing at Tech Wings?"

"Actually, that's exactly what I meant, but there's a handle for you to hold onto!"

Mark unstrapped his seatbelt and grabbed his Lightning Gun. Overpowering the drag forces that slammed against his body upon leaning outward, he held on to the handle outside the door. Even though it was difficult at first, he managed to get a hit on each Tech Wing that came near, either shooting them in the wings, leaving it flightless, or shooting its core or head, causing it to explode.

"Good shot.. for a first," Numbuh Two said, laughing again.

"Funny," Mark said sarcastically, not understanding why Numbuh Two was making puns in such a serious situation. For the next few minutes, more SCAMPERs arrived to take on the waves of Tech Wings. At one point, right when Mark was about to blow up yet another Tech Wing, Ben killed it with his laser eye beams. Mark looked at Ben in a surprised look.

"I was gonna kill that one," Mark said.

In response, Ben chuckled, before barrel-rolling to the other side of the SCAMPER. As Mark was about to continue blasting the Tech Wings, he heard a very loud shriek. And when he looked where the shriek was emanating from, he saw a GigaTech Wing flying directly at him. Before Mark could quickly get back into the SCAMPER, he accidentally tripped, and ended up hanging on to the door of the SCAMPER. Mark tried to aim but was grabbed by the GigaTech Wing, and found himself flying over Tech Square.

From what Mark could see, the GigaTech Wing was the only monster left in the Tech Wing squad. All the SCAMPERs in the area seemed to focus fire onto the GigaTech Wing, but they seemed to stop when they saw Mark was being carried by the GigaTech Wing. When Mark looked around, he saw that pink, blue and green streaks were flying around the sky, and Mark knew what they were. Not long after Mark saw the streaks of light flying around, he heard a somewhat high-pitched voice say, "LEAVE HIM ALONE, YOU METAL JERK!"

Suddenly, the blue streak flew straight at the GigaTech Wing, causing it to fly backwards, explode, and to let go of Mark, flinging Mark high into the air, and toward the outer ocean of the green goo, and Mark fell faster every second. When Mark looked away toward the building-covered island surrounded in Fusion Matter he saw the blue streak of light flying toward him, and after it grabbed him, he felt a massive rush of air, and suddenly, Mark was standing on the ground near Dexlabs.

Mark could only spurt out, "T-thank you," but the girl she saw after was OK with it and smiled. Like Buttercup, she had a similar dress, but it was blue instead of green. She also had blonde hair in pigtails, and big blue eyes. She was Bubbles. Then as the SCAMPER that Mark was in began to land, Numbuh Five walked out of it.

"Mark, you OK?"

"Other than being swiped by Tech Wings, I'm... pretty good."

Ben then landed on the ground as Jetray, and a green light enveloped him, turning him into normal Ben. As more SCAMPERs began to land, many KND operatives came out of them. One of them was Numbuh One, a rather bald kid with a red sweatshirt, gray shorts, and rather big brown boots. He also had shades much like the ones Mark had before. Soon after, Blossom, the leader of the Powerpuff Girls, and Buttercup landed. Mark had never thought he would be with all these heroes at once, so he felt honored at first, but then realized that this was not a time to gloat, so he got serious again. Before the meeting began, Mark looked around. Other than Dexlabs having a lot more gigantic green pods on it, he could see some sort of airship in the sky, which looked like it was about 3000 feet above Dexlabs. Behind it was that giant cluster of planets.

"Dexter's been kidnapped and been brought to an unknown location in Tech Square. There's many places he could be," Buttercup stated to start the meeting. "He could be hidden anywhere in Tech Square, from up here to the Infected Zone! He might not even be here!"

"Wait, hold up. Infected Zones? What is all this stuff?" Mark asked. Because of the fact everybody else knew about Infected Zones except him, everyone else looked at him awkwardly. But Ben backed Mark up by saying,

"He's the kid who was the victim of the time jump incident, so he doesn't really know anything about the invasion. You should at least tell him what we're up against, and what the Infected Zones are."

"OK then," Blossom said. She was the leader of the Powerpuff Girls, with a pink dress, orange hair, and a giant red hairbow, differentiating her from the others. "Well, let me get you up to date about what is going on. That planet up there, is Planet Fusion, ruled by an intergalactic tyrant named Lord Fuse. His massive armies have been battling us for the last 17 months.

Well, Infected Zones are the most infected areas on Arkadex. Because of Fuse's Terrafusers (which are the giant green pods), the infection is insane inside the Infected Zones, so insane the infection can warp the laws of science itself, such as floating platforms. It's a good thing Dexter had set up energy shields so the infection can be contained. Also, most Infected Zones are home to lots of monsters, and most of them even are the homes of Fusions-"

"Fusions?" Mark asked.

"Fusions are dark, evil versions of us, which are created when Fusion Matter, the liquid that you've seen all over the place, mixes with someone's favorite item. The only Fusion that we've reported here is Fusion Buttercup. There could be more, but they haven't been spotted yet. I don't think that Fusion Buttercup would hide in the Infected Zone, and from reports from the past few hours, the most Fusion activity has occurred inside Dexlabs. But we don't know."

"Maybe she is in Dexlabs," Mark proposed.

Buttercup said, "Well, if she is, and you go in there alone, there's no way you'll survive without someone of equal power, so if you are to go in there, you'll need a Powerpuff Girl to go with you."

"I never said I wanted to go in there-"

"OK, OK, but do you want to go in there?" Blossom said.

"Well, if Dexter's in there, yeah."

Nearly instantly after saying that, screeches and roars emanated from all sides. Cyberus and Tech Wings began to come from seemingly nowhere, all growling and ready to attack.

"What the heck?" Blossom said. "OK, kid! You'll go in there with Bubbles, and a squad of KND agents, including Numbuh One! Go, we'll handle things here!"

* * *

**Well, there you go! That's the second chapter. What do you think will happen as Mark descends into Dexlabs to try to save Dexter? What will he encounter? Say your speculations in the form of reviews!**

**(The next chapter is a bit longer, so I might not be able to post it until Friday, but hey, that gives you awesome people more time to read it!) **


	3. The Battle of Tech Square

**Yo, everyone! This next chapter of Mark's tale should be a true mind-blower, and if it didn't, you might want to read it again! And, can you find the reference to an awesome mind-bending game?**

* * *

Mark quickly ran for the doors of Dexlabs, which were covered in Fusion Matter. On further inspection, Mark noticed that the doors had been sealed by solidified Fusion Matter too. Mark blasted on the Fusion Matter with his Lightning Gun, but that didn't work, either.

"Allow me," Bubbles said, as her eyes began to glow bright blue. Mark immediately knew what she was going to do, as he had seen her doing it before, when watching the Powerpuff Girls battle villains from the sidelines. Suddenly, bright blue lasers shot out of her eyes, immediately turning two of the metallic doors into a big puddle of liquid metal in a matter of seconds.

"OK, that works," Mark said, as he run into the infected lobby room, following by Numbuh One and the KND agents. As Mark guessed, Dexlabs was riddled with Fusion Spawns, who instantly were alerted to the presence of the group. Mark blasted one Fusion Spawn with his Lightning Gun, which shocked it and sent it fleeing into a small hole in the wall.

Mark had a familiar understanding of how to get through some of Dexlabs, since it seemed to him that he had only been there a half-hour ago. He knew they had to go in the waiting room, but after that, when he was being led to the main room, he wasn't paying attention.

"Into the waiting room!" Mark said, as he quickly jumped over a puddle of Fusion Matter. Upon entering, he looked around, trying to locate that hidden wall Dexter had come out of. But apparently his efforts were unnecessary, because that panel had been ripped out of the wall, and thrown to the other side of the room.

"Dexter's down there," Mark said. Mark looked down the passageway. It was completely wrecked, compared to when he was there before. He could see ruins of inventions scattered everywhere, and there was barely any light other than flickering light strips in the ceiling. There were even claw marks in the walls!

"They've been here," Numbuh One said, as alarms went off. The squadron continued through the seemingly endless hallways (killing some Cyberus or Fusion Spawns in the process) before somebody finally had the nerve to say,

"I think we're lost."

Suddenly, what sounded like a giant chunk of rock being ripped away from the ground occurred. Mark didn't what it was, but Mark heard after sounded like metal bending, snapping, and crashing into the ground. Mark then turned his sights to Bubbles, and said, "You have X-ray vision, right?"

"Why, of course, silly!" Bubbles said before slightly giggling. Soon after, her eyes glowed bright blue, but no lasers came out.

"I'm picking up someone over there," she said, pointing at the wall to Mark's left after scoping out the lab. "I don't know if it's Fusion Buttercup or Dexter."

"Well, he might be that way," Mark said, as he heard a small explosion near the doorways of Dexlabs, followed by metal clanks. He looked down toward a large circular hallway that seemed different from the other hallways. "This way seems familiar to me. And that must be a good thing!"

As Mark and the others ran down the circular hallway, they saw a holographic map that momentarily shorted out every few seconds. According to the map, the circular hallway lead directly to the vault door leading to the main room. As the group continued down the small circular hallway, Mark could hear something, a sound that got louder as they approached the vault. The hum of a containment field.

"Warning! Core Corruption at 50%!" Mark heard a robotic voice which didn't like Computress say. When the group got to the vault door, they quickly noticed that it had a massive Buttercup-shaped hole in it. Mark quickly reloaded his Lightning Gun before stepping in, and the first thing he noticed about the room that was different was that the entire back wall had been ripped out, and a view of infinite green sea and sky took its place. Then Mark saw Dexter in a yellow plasma field, hooked up to a control panel. Since Fusion Buttercup did not seem to be in the room, Mark and the others ran down to Dexter.

"It is you! I knew we would meet again!" Dexter said, noticing Mark in the group. "And you managed to get time warped here, all because of my stupid sister, who missed up the time jump sequence." Dexter continued to faintly mumble, "Of all the times you could have warped here, it had to be here-"

Mark deactivated the control panel, causing the containment field to slowly hover downward, before disappearing entirely.

Mark said to Dexter, "At least I got here in time to save you!"

Suddenly a distorted Buttercup's laugh emerged from the doorway before it spoke. "You just walked right into my trap..."

Before Mark could even turn around, he suddenly felt himself being lifted off the ground by something extremely strong. Once he managed to focus on whatever was holding him, he saw Buttercup. But... she was different. She was bigger in size, her skin was a very bubbly light green, her normal attire was completely black, and her eyes were glowing red. She was, without a doubt, Fusion Buttercup.

Quickly after Fusion Buttercup grabbed Mark, she threw him into the back wall, causing massive pain to circulate through Mark's body as he hit the ground. Near the point of unconsciousness, he looked at Fusion Buttercup, as she turned around and said, "Who's next?"

All the KND agents in the room instantly blasted at Fusion Buttercup, but they didn't do a thing to her, other than making her more angry. Fusion Buttercup merely blasted them into the ceiling, before Bubbles flew at Fusion Buttercup. While Fusion Buttercup resisted to be charged, Bubbles attacked at full speed, causing an explosion which blew up some of the floor, and caused alarms to go off.

Fusion Buttercup flew throughout the place, destroying anything in her path. "Even if you defeat me, Tech Square will still go down, so stop wasting your time!"

Numbuh One quickly snatched a high-powered laser gun from a nearby weapons storage unit, and fired at Fusion Buttercup, actually causing some damage.

"YOU DARE OPPOSE ME!" Fusion Buttercup said, before charging him, through the wall, through the ground, and outward into the sea of Fusion Matter.

"NUMBUH ONE! NO!" Bubbles said before charging Fusion Buttercup again, only to greeted by a Fusion fist. Bubbles quickly flew into the wall, and after that, Fusion Buttercup quickly wiped out the remaining KND agents. Then she walked over to the control panel.

"Now let's fix this," Fusion Buttercup said. She pressed a few buttons, including a big green one, causing containment fields to surround Bubbles and Dexter again. Bubbles tried to burst herself out, but she was just knocked back into the other side of the forcefield. But Fusion Buttercup knew she wasn't done yet, so she turned around to see Mark, still lying on the ground after being thrown into the wall.

"And now to deal with you," Fusion Buttercup said, punching her left hand with her right fist with an evil grin on her face. "The kid who doesn't know anything about us."

"I know enough about you to make me hate you," Mark said, pointing his Lightning Gun at Fusion Buttercup. Even when he fired it, the blaster shot did not do anything but to annoy her even more.

"Seriously?" Fusion Buttercup said, nearly cracking up with laughter. "I'm a freakin' Fusion Powerpuff! You seriously think you can do something like that to ME?"

"I might not be able to do anything to you, but I can do this!" Mark said before tilting his gun to aim at the control panel.

"DON'T YOU DARE-"

But it was too late. The gun had already fired its shot of plasma. In mere milliseconds, the control panel began to go haywire, and then it exploded. As the containment fields slowly sank toward the ground, Fusion Buttercup instantly picked up Mark and pinned him against the wall.

"You will pay for that... with your life!" Fusion Buttercup yelled as she raised her left fist. Suddenly she emitted a painful scream, and dropped Mark to the floor. Dexter had apparently struck her with some sort of gigantic electric handheld claw.

"Mark," Dexter said, as Fusion Buttercup charged Bubbles into the wall, only to be pushed back into the other wall. "There's a lever over there that'll put an impenetrable containment field around her, but she needs to be-"

More alarms suddenly began to go off, along with the same robotic voice saying, "Warning! Core Corruption at 100%! All energy must be diverted to fix the reactor! If anything over than reactor maintenance is powered up, the reactor will overheat!"

"Uh-oh!" Bubbles says.

Fusion Buttercup quickly grinned, before saying, "Go on, continue fighting me. All I'm doing is stalling you!" She charged Bubbles onto the floor, but Dexter attacked her with his electric claw, causing her to become stunned. Mark looked down at the floor, noticing that there was a circle that said "Impenetrable Containment Location", that Fusion Buttercup was directly hovering over. Mark instantly knew what to do, and turned to his left. There was a lever that had a label above it, saying:

**IMPENETRABLE CONTAINMENT ACCESS LEVER: DO NOT USE UNLESS IN A TOTAL EMERGENCY**

Mark instantly ran over to the lever, and managed to pull it just as Fusion Buttercup managed to get back to her senses. Suddenly, two spinning giant pieces of glass appeared and surrounded Fusion Buttercup in a seemingly reversed hourglass shape.

"WHAT THE HECK?" Fusion Buttercup said, before attempting to pound on it, but to no avail.

"Mark!" Dexter said quickly. "Flip the electrocution lever!" Mark quickly looked around the room, and noticed that there was another lever similar to the previous one that was right next to the containment lever.

"DON'T YOU DARE!" Fusion Buttercup yelled. But Mark still pulled the lever, and water began to pour into the containment field.

"NO! NO! NO!" Suddenly a metal wire in the ceiling began to spark, and everything in the containment field started getting electrocuted, including Fusion Buttercup, who was shrieking due to being exposed to 100,000,000 volts. When the water drained and the containment field left, Fusion Buttercup slowly fell to the floor as a big puddle of Fusion Matter. The last thing she said was, "Tech Square will fall..."

"That reminds me!" Dexter stated as he ran to Mark. "Can you give me your NanoCom for a second?"

"Wait," Mark said, as he looked at his communicator. "This is a NanoCom?"

"Not yet, but can I have it for a second?" Dexter asked.

"Uh..I guess," Mark said as he handed it to Dexter. When Dexter took out his own, it sent a beam of light from his NanoCom into Mark's, causing Mark's NanoCom to change color from red to white.

"What are you doing?" Mark asked.

"Oh, the communicator I gave you was a prototype for the NanoCom. This is the full-" Suddenly, Mark's NanoCom began to blink rapidly.

"All Nano Creation Components available! Please point NanoCom to Fusion Matter!" the NanoCom seemed to blurt out in a robotic voice. Mark did what the NanoCom said, and suddenly, the Fusion Matter began to rise into a floating sphere, along with this small bit of cloth left over from Fusion Buttercup's jacket. The sphere began to glow and change color from green to red. It also began to pulse rings of energy and bursts of light. Suddenly, the Fusion Matter began to take shape and then a noise came from it.

"BUTTERCUP! YEAH! POWERPUFF GIRLS RULE!" the noise said. After the flashes of light faded, Mark saw what the NanoCom had done. It apparently had created what Buttercup looked like when she was 5, albeit more cartoonish. Even though Mark didn't say anything, Dexter did notice his confusion, and began explaining it to him.

"Oh yes, let me explain what just happened," Dexter said, "Mark, that is a Nano. Just like Fusions, Nanos are made of Fusion Matter, but they are made differently from Fusions. The Fusion Matter that was once Fusion Buttercup has been used to create this Buttercup Nano. Just remember, Mark, this Nano is not to be underestimated. Even though she is small, she's just as powerful as the original Buttercup."

Suddenly they heard a shriek, but it came from Bubbles.

"IT'S SO CUTE!" Bubbles said. Apparently she was hugging the Buttercup nano extremely tight, but the Nano just flew out of her grasp anyway.

"Sup?" Nano Buttercup said as she approached Mark.

"...Hey!" Mark responded before the Nano and Mark high-fived. A few seconds later, a major tremor occurred.

"Uh, oh!" Mark said, before pressing a button that said, "CALL BACK NANO". Suddenly a beam of light began to hit the Nano.

"But I was just getting sta-" The Buttercup nano said before it turned into red light and was reabsorbed into the NanoCom.

The strange robotic voice talked again, as the alarm system shut down. "WARNING! CORE OVERHEATING! NUCLEAR MELTDOWN IMMINENT!"

"WHOA! That doesn't sound good!" Dexter said, "Hurry, get out! This whole place is about to blow!"

As Bubbles flew out and the few remaining KND agents ran up the ramp, Mark said, "What about you?"

Dexter looked back at the sea of Fusion Matter, noticing it had risen a couple feet, before saying, "Fusion Buttercup has obviously tampered with the reactor. There's no way it can shut down now. She destroyed all of the manual controls and everything else controlling the reactor. Its only fate is to explode with the force of at least 2 megatons. The blast radius and the radiation won't hit any of the functioning locations, thankfully, but it will absolutely destroy everything that was Tech Square."

"Well, let's get out then!" Mark said, and he and Dexter quickly ran out of the main room. Thankfully Dexter knew which ways to go. When they got out of Dexlabs, they saw that a big battle was happening. Many of the heroes were fighting against a massive army of Cyberus and Tech Wings. But Mark saw someone else within the army, someone that looked like Dexter, except his skin was green, he had glowing red eyes, and his white lab coat was dark red. Mark instantly knew they had another Fusion in their midst: Fusion Dexter.

"We've got another Fusion!" Ben said, back in Swampfire form.

"I know!" Blossom said. "But we can't deal with the Fusion and the monsters at once!"

"Just let me kill them all!" Buttercup said.

"Buttercup, don't-" But Buttercup flew off anyway. Her arms began to spin in different directions, causing green tornados to come out of her arms, and after Buttercup swung her arms at the army, the gigantic green tornadoes sucked up most of the Fusion army into the air. But Fusion Dexter remained on the ground. After the tornadoes cleared, only a little portion of the Fusion army remained, before the Fusion monsters rained down onto the ground.

Ben slammed on the Omnitrix symbol on his chest, and after a flash of green light, he became a new type of creature. This creature seemed to have a color scheme of jet black and orange-yellow, where orange-yellow covered his pillar-like shoulders, chest, hands and feet. The most interesting part about this new alien was that his metallic gray head was detached from the rest of his body, yet was still connected to it via powerful magnetism.

"LODESTAR!" Ben said as he raised his claw-like hands. Mark could see some sort of magnetic circles emanating from his hands, which caused Fusion Dexter, still holding onto his metallic handheld claw, to fly toward him. But Fusion Dexter let go of his handheld claw, and pulled out a non-metallic pistol.

"Dexter! We have to get out of here! This whole place is going to blow!" Mark said, edging to get far away from Tech Square.

"We can't get away without stopping my Fusion counterpart!" Dexter said. "If we try to escape, he'll just take us down!"

"OK, but we'll have to stop him quick!" Mark said as he turned his attention back to the battle. Now, Fusion Dexter had seemed to be have set his handheld claw to a new mode that looked non-magnetic. Since Fusion Dexter was using non-magnetic devices, Ben could not do anything to Fusion Dexter in Lodestar form, so he quickly attempted to change his form, but for some reason, he couldn't. Apparently, Dexter's handheld claw had some sort of magnetic controller, which prevented Ben from changing his alien form, before forcing Ben to change back to human form. As he walked slowly to Ben, who could not do anything, Mark and a bunch of KND agents, including Numbuh Two, instantly opened fire on Fusion Dexter, but somehow, Fusion Dexter remained unaffected.

Fusion Dexter brought out a strange red device, and attached it to Ben's Omnitrix. Suddenly, the Omnitrix seemed to spark and glow red, before falling off and bursting into flames on the ground.

"Prepare to die, Ben Tennyson!" Fusion Dexter said before throwing smoke grenades all around him, completely making the agents unable to see what he was doing. After an ear-splitting scream and some strange sounds, the smoke began to clear and... let's just say that what they saw haunted everyone's minds later.

"NO!" Blossom screamed as Buttercup flew at Fusion Dexter. But Fusion Dexter merely took out his handheld claw and slammed Buttercup in the face at mind-blowing speed, sending her flying into a SCAMPER. Fusion Dexter then quickly took out an electrical net and threw it at Buttercup as she crashed, causing her to get tangled in the net. When Buttercup tried to break the net, the net didn't even suffer a scratch, and it attacked back by shocking her over and over agian.

"Blossom, what are we going to do?" Bubbles said, thinking hopes were dying.

Blossom realized there was no choice. "I... don't know. Everything we've done against him so far has been useless. I can only come up with a few more options. One could be.. no, using ice won't work." Suddenly Blossom's expression changed to slight sadness. "Well, there's another option. Maybe if we get him somehow into the nuclear core, and distract him, while you cause it to explode..."

"Blossom... you don't mean-"

"Exactly, it's the only way... If all Powerpuff Girls die, no hope will remain for Arkadex. Some sacrifices will be necessary to win... we might not even have to die... let's just hope he doesn't have Antidote X in his arsenal..."

Bubbles sadly nodded, and she looked over at Fusion Dexter, who was walking toward the real Dexter. Mark quickly blasted at Fusion Dexter, even though nothing happened. Fusion Dexter then quickly picked up Mark and threw him across the battlefield into a Fusion Spawn. After Mark quickly got up, he saw that Fusion Dexter was now pinning Dexter to the wall via his own metallic claw.

"What a fool you are," Fusion Dexter said as he prepared a special laser pistol from his pocket. "For my human counterpart..."

Suddenly a pink streak crossed Dexter's vision, meaning Blossom had charged Fusion Dexter, but Fusion Dexter's pistol malfunctioned and cut through a huge containment sphere, causing it to collapse on Dexter, surrounding him. But thankfully there was a secret panel in the wall, so Dexter entered it.

Meanwhile, Fusion Dexter quickly looked around and slammed the metallic claw straight at Bubbles, causing her to fly straight into the Dexlabs building. Blossom also charged Fusion Dexter, and just barely missed Fusion Dexter's metallic claw. Once managing to get a hold of him, she spun him around and sent him flying into the ground.

Mark, who was watching the spectacle, thought he should help in one way or another, but at the same time, he knew that this was Bubbles and Blossom's fight. So he watched as Blossom blasted Fusion Dexter into the Dexlabs lobby.

As the battle with the Fusion army and the KND squads came to a halt, both sides looked into the lobby to see what was going on. What they could see was a battle occurring inside the lobby of Dexlabs, which was really hard to focus on. Blossom, Bubbles and Fusion Dexter were constantly being thrown by one of the other two. It lasted for many minutes, with some really strange moments. Mark even remembered a moment where Blossom was thrown through the inventions cabinet, and was blasted straight into Bubbles when a laser propeller blasted her away from it.

Eventually, the punches, kicks and laser blasts began to occur more frequently, because Blossom, Bubbles and Fusion Dexter were flying all over the place. Then they flew straight through the walls and into the nuclear core room. Once they weren't able to see what was going on, both sides started battling again.

Meanwhile, Buttercup, not knowing what at all was going on because she was trapped by the electric net, was carried into a nearby landing SCAMPER by KND agents holding electricity-proof gloves and armor. As it took off, Mark wondered whether or not they should attempt to bail out in another SCAMPER right now. But that thought was immediately confirmed when Mark heard a massive explosion. Not from the nuclear core, but from the top of Dexlabs.

When Mark looked up, he suddenly saw that the house at the top of Dexlabs had exploded. Mark quickly ran for cover from the falling pieces of wood, shrapnel and metal and went under a large metal pipe coming out of Dexlabs into the ground. Numbuh Two was also there.

"THE REACTOR IS GOING TO EXPLODE ANY MINUTE NOW!" Mark said.

Numbuh Two disagreed, however, because he said, "But those Fusion Monsters are just going to attack our SCAMPERs! We can't get out until we've defeated them! We have to wait!"

Mark immediately got angry. He suddenly yelled without thinking, "SCREW WAITING! I DON'T WANT EVERYONE TO DIE IN A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION BECAUSE WE HAD TO 'WAIT'!" When Mark suddenly came to his senses, he suddenly looked away and at the battle scene. "Sorry... I just... don't want to die because of a reason like that..."

At that instant, Numbuh Two understood what Mark meant. He pulled out his communicator, and said, "Computress? Send down SCAMPERs now! Get us out of here!"

Not that long after, a group of six or seven SCAMPERs began to land on the ground. The second they landed, everyone cluttered onto the SCAMPERs, firing at the monsters as they boarded. They then quickly took off toward the warship, which was currently blasting at every Fusion Monster it could hit. As the SCAMPERs landed, Numbuh Five, who was also on the same SCAMPER as Mark, instantly talked into her communicator, "Computress! Set up nuclear protection shields NOW!"

Not soon after, a gigantic blue version of the containment fields Mark saw in Dexlabs surrounded the ship. As the ship slowly sped away from Dexlabs, everyone got out of the crowded SCAMPERs. As the people spread out all over the ship, Mark looked around and he could see some stacks of gray boxes in some places. Mark also saw many Tech Wings banging against the shield, just to be incinerated by the laser cannons from the ship, and saw a couple of dead Fusion Monsters on the ship. Mark assumed those were there because some of the monsters had made it through, and they were wiped out by the KND agents.

Mark looked over at Buttercup, who was still trapped in that electric net, thrashing about on top of one of the crates, and multiple KND agents were trying to find a way to break the net, but obviously failing. Mark decided that, for the moment, he would watch Tech Square's remains disappear under the horizon, if it didn't fall into the sea first.

Meanwhile, Buttercup heard a voice in her mind, which sounded a lot like Blossom's voice. Buttercup first assumed that she was hallucinating, then thought that Blossom was using telepathy, which Buttercup never knew she had. In fact, it was the first and last time she would ever use it. Buttercup heard this in her mind:

"_Buttercup, even though you don't know what is happening... I won't be with you anymore..._

Buttercup instantly realized what was happening. Blossom was going to die!

"_Once Tech Square falls... you will be the only... remaining Powerpuff Girl on Arkadex. If you die, the world is doomed... _

Buttercup couldn't believe it. Both of her sisters were going to die! She tried to say this in her mind while screaming, "No, please, don't die, Blossom and Bubbles! Don't do this!"

"_It's too late, Buttercup. It's already happened. Listen... you have to live. Do not fail my last wish... Make us proud to have been your sisters, Buttercup... Goodbye..."_

"NO! NO! NO! YOU CAN'T DIE NOW!" Buttercup yelled, as the electrical net began to suddenly break apart. Once Mark could see Buttercup clearly, the first thing he saw was... tears. A sea of tears... literally. There was a waterfall going off of the side of the ship, only to be incinerated by the force field. Mark had never seen Buttercup cry this much before. In fact, he never had seen her cry at ALL. But Mark felt the same feeling of sadness. He had known and made friends with Blossom and Bubbles ever since they were first public heroes, and to have them be left behind, to die... it was very painful to think about. Mark realized that many people were walking into a doorway, so he decided to follow them.

Before he entered the doorway, he looked behind himself to see Buttercup walking toward the edge of the ship, staring at the blip that the remains of Tech Square now were. After staring at it for 5 seconds, she fell to her knees, and let out an ear-splitting scream.

"**NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"**

Thankfully, Mark had covered his ears before the scream had occurred. He quickly got onto the platform with the other people, which floated up to a big room, which Mark assumed to be the ship's main control center. And it was.

Some of the other important people walked into the main control center of the gigantic ship. Its interior was dark blue, and had a squashed-circle-like interior. There were glass windows facing the seas of green, and Dexbots were controlling the ship, making it fly away from Tech Square. There were many control panels along the walls, and there was also a blue device in the center. Mark could see Numbuh Two walking over to this device, and suddenly, blue flashes could be seen above the device.

"Guys, we're getting a holographic transmission!" Numbuh Two said. "It's from Dexter!" After Numbuh Two said that, almost everyone on the deck of the ship instantly walked over to the circular device. The blue flashes above the device then quickly turned into the shape of Dexter.

This transmission said, "Everyone, despite our best efforts, Tech Square has been lost. We have lost many heroes, but the war is not over, not by a long shot! I am sorry, but I cannot join you. Although I would love to, it is now impossible."

"This facility will self-destruct in two minutes," the robotic voice on Dexter's end interrupted. Dexter sighed and continued,

"But we have hope for Arkadex. On this ship is a boy named Mark. He is the kid that participated in my time travel experiment, which had ended in chaos."

Many people looked at Mark, who felt slightly nervous now.

Dexter continued on, "And I never thought I would say this, but... I want you to help Mandark rebuild my time capsule, in order to send this kid back to the past. He is our only hope to save Arkadex. Don't worry about me, though. I will be fine. There's an escape pod in the remaining bit of Dexlabs. I will take it into space to find refuge on another planet far from here, but I do not want you to retrieve me. Just get to Sector V and to safety. Dexter out."

As the blue hologram faded away, everyone seemed to fall for Dexter's lie, including Mark. Meanwhile, Dexter, who had found himself in the main room again, ripped out his communicator, and crushed it in his purple glove. As small computer chips inside the communicator began to fall onto the metal floor, he pressed his finger on a yellow button on another control panel that said, "LAUNCH ESCAPE POD".

"Warning! Reactor Core is at critical temp-" The robotic voice finally shorted out for the final time, and a glow began to emanate from the entrance of the room. Dexter sat down to look out at the ocean of green again, with a smile on his face. The glow behind Dexter began to glow brighter and brighter, and eventually it got so bright that Dexter's vision was nothing but pure brightness. Before the reactor core completely exploded, Dexter spoke his final words,

"Go get em', Mark..."


	4. The Kids Next Door

**Hey guys! The Tech Square arc is over, but how will the people cope, and what will Mark and the others do now that so many heroes are gone? Let's find out!**

* * *

As the bright flash of a nuclear explosion reached the ship, Mark quickly shielded his eyes. After a couple seconds, the bright flash faded away, and Mark could see the mushroom cloud going high into the ominous green sky, with a colossal wave of Fusion Matter following, then the Fusion Matter receding away, as if the nuclear blast had vaporized. Mark wondered who else remained in the Future. He wanted to know, but, at the same time, he was scared about who else had died.

Mark walked back onto the deck a few minutes later, and saw many Dexbots and KND agents patrolling the deck. Mark didn't know where the ship was going, so he just decided to wait around. Although nobody seemed familiar to him, his eyes suddenly met a very familiar face, which had brown hair and brown eyes.

"Evan?" Mark said as he ran over to the KND agent.

"MARK!" Evan said, as he ran to Mark, and the two fist-bumped. "I haven't seen you since that time we hung out at Townsville Park... even though it's completely underseas now. Your parents told me about you volunteering for the time machine experiment, and how it went haywire. I didn't know how long it would be until I saw you."

"Yeah, but I'm here... **now**. And I see you're a member of the this 'organization of children'?"

"Yup, I'm Numbuh 868 of Sector V, the most important sector in the KND currently. And haven't I told you multiple times that I've been a member of the KND? I guess you haven't really believed me, have you?"

"Well, hey," Mark said. "I've never heard of the KND, so the idea of you being a part of a world-wide organization of children fighting against adults seemed ridiculous to me. Tell me, what is the KND anyway?"

Evan said, "Well, it's highly complicated, so I'll try to simplify it. The KND, meaning Kids Next Door, is a worldwide - no - galactic organization of children dedicated to fighting off the tyranny of adults. By the time a kid becomes a teenager, they become against the children, but I'm still against that idea, to tell you the truth. But during times of war, this rule is revoked. All kids, teenagers and adults are working together now against Fuse."

After a pause, Evan continued, "I understand this is all... shocking to you. I mean, you've only been here for about... a half-hour?"

Yeah, I can't believe what's happened in those past 30 minutes."

Evan and Mark momentarily looked at Buttercup, who was now ranting and apologizing that she couldn't save them, and saying words, that, for the sake of keeping this story appropriate, I have decided to ignore.

"Wow," Evan said. "Language much?"

"Evan, her sisters might be dead!" Mark said. "She has every right to say those things!"

"Sorry..." Evan said, before a voice came from announcing megaphones at the top of the ship's tower. It was Numbuh Two's.

"We're coming up on Sector V! We'll be landing in a few minutes!"

"Isn't Sector V north of Pokey Oaks?" Mark asked. "The place with that insane treehouse?"

"Yes, it's Numbuh Two's sector of the KND," Evan said. "The treehouse is their base."

Mark thought to himself, "All that time, that giant treehouse was a KND base..."

Mark looked past the warship towers and toward the Fusion sea, and what he saw was what looked like a giant cluster of raised bits of land. He could see buildings, and a couple of other places that seemed to have some kind of deflector shields surrounding them, which Mark guessed to be Infected Zones. As he passed what looked like Genius Grove, he could see that Mandark's old house (well, it wasn't really a house, it was a giant laboratory building like Dexlabs) had received the sad fate of being an Infected Zone. But that wasn't where they were going.

As the warship got closer to Sector V, Mark could see something on the horizon. A gigantic tree, which, on closer look, had a bunch of wooden rooms, platforms and even a plane and a boat! Mark was even more surprised when he saw that the chunk of land that the KND Treehouse was on was floating over a metal object, and was being held by chains, most likely to prevent the Treehouse from flying into outer space.

As the Dexlabs warship quickly chained itself to the northern side of the land Sector V stood on, KND agents began to walk off of the warship and onto the land that remained of Arkadex. Many Dexbots also all seemed to take gray steel boxes from the ship's deck and began to wheel onto the land of Sector V.

"Hey, kid," Mark heard Numbuh Two say. "Computress wanted me to tell you that she's waiting for you at Hero Square."

Mark looked at his white NanoCom, and decided to explore it some more. He could see that the middle of the glowing blue home screen showed the time, which currently said, "**5:09 PM**". The date below said, "Tuesday, February 16." He saw three other options on the bottom of the screen, which said, "NANO MENU", "INVENTORY", and "MISC. MENUS".

"Hey, kid. Are you getting off or not?" Mark heard Numbuh Five say as she walked out of the control room. "You can fiddle with your NanoCom later. Computress's batteries won't last forever. Well, actually, they are unlimited, but you get my point."

Mark picked up his Lightning Gun and walked onto the land of Sector V. Other than the gigantic treehouse towering over Sector V, he also noticed a strange marble structure, which had five different ends sticking out like a star. Then he saw a marble plaque, sitting near one of the ends of the structure. The plaque said,

"Hero Square: Dedicated to heroes that have died in battle, may their memory be remembered."

Mark looked up and saw the top of the ends sticking out, had holograms on top of them. Mark looked at the 3-D holograms, investigating them. A hologram just popped up showing both Blossom and Bubbles, and another popped up showing Ben Tennyson. The other was a green monkey of some kind, wearing a blue outfit, had a purple cape, and wore some kind of white and purple turban-like helmet. Mark instantly perceived this to be Mojo Jojo, one of Townsville's many villains. This made Mark wonder, "How is a villain a hero?"

The next hologram showed a kid with an orange shirt and purple pants. He seemed to wear some kind of sock on his head, for an unknown reason. Mark wondered what this kid had done to become a hero. The last hologram seemed to be some kind of blue ghost-looking figure, minus being transparent. Mark wondered why he was a hero, but he must have also done something good during the war, just like the other kid. Mark remembered after a short time that Computress wanted to see him, so he quickly went over there.

"A little later than expected, but I can forgive," Computress said. Mark was glad, because he just wanted to have a look at Hero Square. "But I digress. Because of the fact you have time-jumped, you may have some information, but more is needed."

"Like what?" Mark said.

"3 months ago, the invasion had turned into Fuse's hands. This was because of the Planetoid Fusion, an asteroid full of Fusion Matter, that Fuse had sent toward Earth. We could have destroyed it with our Ion Cannon months ago, but Vilgax, an alien tryant constantly wanting Ben's Omnitrix, had hijacked it, and attempted to attack Planet Fusion with it. Although it blew up one of the absorbed planets, nothing happened.

After this, it was inevitable Planetoid Fusion would hit Arkadex, and when it did, it sent waves of Fusion Matter throughout the world. Most of us had managed to set up deflector shields in Sector V, Pokey Oaks, Peach Creek, Goat's Junk Yard, Genius Grove, Galaxy Gardens, Mojo's Volcano, and Tech Square. Whoever couldn't get out in time, was engulfed in Fusion Matter, and the force of the explosion caused the ground to collapse below them into an ever-rising sea of Fusion Matter, resulting in this destruction shown here. The losses caused by Vilgax's betrayal were near billions, including very important people such as-"

A list projected out of Computress's body, showing the list of casualties after Planetoid Fusion's collision. Mark was shocked by the large amounts of people on the list:

-Professor Utonium, Princess Morbucks, Mayor, Him, Fuzzy Lumkins, Ace, Ed, Courage, Billy, Mandy, Hoss, Numbuh Three, Numbuh Four, Bloo, Mac, Frankie, Mr. Herriman, Juniper Lee, Max Tennyson, Kevin Levin, Hex, Tetrax

Mark was shocked by the amount of losses by the Planetoid Fusion. "And I'm not done yet," Computress said. "Just recently, Lord Fuse stormed the remains of Downtown, and part of the Northeastern Suburbs resulting in more losses-" Computress projected another list. Even though it wasn't as big, Mark still was shocked by all the death from Fuse's attacks.

Mojo's Volcano Attack: Mojo Jojo, Alan, Gwen Tennyson, Finn The Human, Agent Six, Sym-Bionic Titan

NorthEastern Suburbs Attack: Edd, Stickybeard, Wilt

Galaxy Gardens and Tech Square Attacks: Blossom, Bubbles, Ben Tennyson, Numbuh One,

"Now, where were we?" Computress asked, as the list disappeared. "Oh, yes. In order to prepare you for the upcoming battles, we will need to train you."

"Haven't I already been through enough? I mean, I destroyed plenty of Tech Wings, Fusion Spawns and Cyberus, and I even killed a Fusion. What more training could I possibly need?" Mark asked.

"By training, I mean to create a great field of trust in you and your nanos, for if your bond is great, your combinations will be unstoppable. Bring out your Nano, please. If you have looked at your NanoCom, you should know about the Nano Menu."

Mark looked at his NanoCom, and pressed the Nano Menu part of the screen. Suddenly, three slots popped up on the bottom part of the screen. The Buttercup nano was in the slot on the left, surrounded in some red light. Above was an option that said, "Nano Collection", but Mark knew this was irrelevant. He pressed the Buttercup nano on the screen, and saw one option as the Buttercup nano entered the top of the screen, "SUMMON NANO?". Mark clicked "YES", and suddenly red lights to fly out of micro-transmitters in the NanoCom, and the lights joined in mid-air, before taking the form of a Buttercup Nano.

"Buttercup is in the house, and she's breaking down the door!" the Nano said before she smiled at Mark, and looked at Computress along with Mark.

"Now," Computress said. "In order to bond with your Nano, you must fight alongside with it, for you both will gain trust in each other. Now, the group of Fusion Spawns other there will be your target." Computress pointed at a squad of Fusion Spawns in the northern section of Sector V. When the Nano Buttercup began to grin an evil smile, Mark already knew what she was going to do. The Nano flew toward the Fusion Spawns, and started stunning them, before beating them up. Mark quickly ran toward the squad, and already half of them had gotten beaten up by Nano Buttercup. Mark quickly blasted other Fusion Spawns, and with his Lightning Gun, he seemed to KO them in one hit. It only took a few seconds before all the Fusion Spawns were dead.

"HA! They're all done!" Nano Buttercup said with excitement, before going into a dance fit for a few seconds. Then, after the Nano zoomed back to Computress, Mark quickly ran back, trying to keep up with the Nano. When he looked back, he saw that a Terrafuser was beginning to leak more Fusion Spawns.

After Mark called back his Nano, a reward for completing your mission (and discovering this prototype), I actually, have a selection of weapons that you may choose from. You may only choose one weapon, however, so choose wisely."

Suddenly a selection menu was projected out of Computress, showing a massive list of weapons. After taking a look at all of them, Mark thought he would choose something unique. And he saw something unique: the only sword in the selection menu. When Mark pressed it, it brought up a stats menu. The Stats Menu contained so much info, he didn't want to read it all, so he attempted to grab the projected hologram, expecting nothing, but suddenly, the hologram began to transform into an actual sword. The blade was red, where the inner parts were sword also seemed to glow bright blue around the edges. When Mark swung the sword at the air, a blue trail of energy followed the sword.

"Very good choice. You have selected the Lightning Sword, which goes well with your Lightning Gun. Now, where were we-"

"Hey, kid!" Numbuh Two's voice suddenly emitted from Mark's NanoCom. "Get to the Treehouse immediately!"

After Mark returned his Nano to his NanoCom, he noticed the sun was beginning to set on the world, making Planet Fusion even more distinct in the sky. He turned around to see the KND Treehouse towering over the land. For many minutes, Mark had no clue how he was going to get up there until he noticed some kind of mushroom-looking object near him. When Mark looked at it, he attempted to step on it, and suddenly, he found himself flying through the air. Thankfully, the height he flew into the air seemed to land him right at the correct level.

When Mark looked back, he could lots of Sector V, including a book he hadn't noticed when looking at the Hero Square holograms, floating above the central spire of the star-shaped. He couldn't read it, though, as it was too far away.

"Over here, Mark," he heard Numbuh Two say.

And with that, the two walked into the treehouse, and to the emergency Treehouse Training Area, not the official one, since it was infected.

* * *

Mark opened his eyes to alarms in the Sleeping Bunker. He jumped out of his bed and ran toward the exit, and as he ran outside, he saw Terrafusers raining down from the sky and attacking the Treehouse. People were in panic, and suddenly, the Treehouse began to fall. Right when Mark was about to hit the ground, Mark suddenly found himself in the KND Sleeping Bunker.

Mark quickly breathed in and out as he realized that he was dreaming. He looked at his NanoCom, which glowed in the dark other than his green eyes. The NanoCom said, "**6:58 AM**". As he looked left, he could see the Sun peaking over the horizon, its light shining through a slight crack in the wooden room he was in that was attached to the Treehouse, which was still floating, thankfully.

Mark didn't know if he should tell Numbuh Two or any of the other KND agents. But as the lights in the room quickly turned on, and all the agents in the room quickly got up, they all seemed to walk down multiple hallways. Mark decided to follow them, because to him, the Treehouse was so massive, he had no clue how to go around. After going through a bunch of hallways, he found what seemed like a gigantic room with many rows of long tables. As Mark walked down the entering stairway, he could see a line of KND agents walking over to a machine, which was creating and bringing down... bags of nachos and boxes of cereal?

"Hey, Mark," Mark heard Evan say, sitting at the long table closest to the stairway. "I bet you just saw our usual KND standard breakfast. Here, I ordered extra for you." He handed a bag of nacho chips to Mark.

"Uh... Thanks," Mark said, as he sat down in the seat Evan saved for him. Mark looked around, still amazed on how the KND got all the stuff to make these bases.

"Evan... how does the KND make these awesome bases anyway?"

"Oh..." Evan said. "Even I don't know. The powerful commanding operatives still keep it a secret. Actually, I think all of them are dead now, so nobody knows how the stuff actually came together now. All I can guess is... creative child minds, probably."

After the 30 minutes that breakfast expanded through, many of the KND agents went down to the Training Bay, but Mark and Evan had already passed their Training, because Numbuh Two had said, "He's already been through enough training."

After Evan and Mark walked outside the Treehouse, Mark looked up once again to see Planet Fusion in the sky, almost camouflaging with the green sky. If it weren't for the attached planets, it would... actually, it wouldn't be that hard to see Planet Fusion. He then looked to his right. The Sun was already shining out of the Fusion seas east of Sector V. Mark sat down on the one of the KND benches in the area, still wondering of everything he doesn't know about the invasion. After a while, he suddenly heard Evan's voice.

"Mark, you want to hang out in Hero Square?" Evan said.

"Sure..." Mark said as he got up and walked over to Evan. That's when he came to a realization. "Wait, how are we going to get down?"

"Oh we just use the zipline," Evan said, pointing to the left. Mark looked over to see a type of post, about 6 and 1/2 feet tall. Extending from the top was a rope, going straight to a post down below at the southeast corner of Hero Square.

"Don't worry," Evan added. "Mandark Industries had placed a type of motion sensor on the zipline post, that when you are close to touching the rope, some kind of zip-line handle will be materialized from nothing. Now, I'm no full expert on science, but you could ask Mandark."

When Mark reached for the rope, a blue flash suddenly occurred, and a blue and yellow zipline handle suddenly appeared. Mark gripped both handles, and jumped off the edge. Instead of falling, he slid down the rope, feeling the air blasting against his body, but he ignored it, and continued to slide down until he finally reached the end, and was in Hero Square.

"WHOOOOOOOO!" Mark heard Evan sliding behind him, before voluntarily letting go 5 feet above the ground, landing pretty easily.

"Well, was that interesting?" Evan said.

"Yeah, I guess..." Mark said, before noticing Numbuh Five was walking to him.

"Mark, Evan, you two have been officially re-assigned to Gamma-Alpha Squad, which is about to go to Sector P-1, or Northern Pokey Oaks. You will taking SCAMPERs as transportation."

As the door of one of the SCAMPERs in Hero Square opened, Mark, Evan and Numbuh Five walked in.

"What about Numbuh Two?" Mark asked.

"Oh, he's remaining here, just in case some kind of Fusion attack occurs."

Mark decided to ask one last question. "How long will it take to get there?"

"Well, given the (150 mph) speed of the SCAMPER, and the fact that Pokey Oaks is roughly 30 miles away, it should take about... 15 minutes, counting for acceleration and slowing down."

Not much after that sentence was completed, the SCAMPER took off, and started speeding toward Pokey Oaks.

* * *

**_15 minutes later..._**

Mark woke up from a small daze he had had mid-flight, after just noticing that the SCAMPER had stopped. When Mark got out, the first thing he saw was that he was in the parking lot of Malph's, one of the popular malls in the suburbs. It's explosion-shaped logo still flickered and was very infected, triggering it was out of business now. He looked to his right and saw more KND agents patrolling the place, and Buttercup seemed to be flying in the sky monitoring all the training in the area.

"This way," Evan said. "The school's over here."

After running for about 45 seconds, he suddenly saw the Infected Zone that used to be the Pokey Oaks Junior High school.

Wow, the school really is wrecked!" Mark said, as he looked at the huge 2-story school through its deflector shields. It was drastically different from photos he had seen of it before he time traveled into the future. Some parts of the school and grounds were caved in, or forced upward, whereas some were normal. The glowing banner of Pokey Oaks Junior High was shut off, not flickering at all, indicating power was off inside the school. He also could see pits of Fusion Matter that contained cars and other objects. Small piles of rubble, to even large trucks were floating in midair. He had remembered what Blossom said earlier in Tech Square exactly, that the Infected Zones have the ability to warp physics and even science itself.

_And to think that this was once the most popular school on the surface of Arkadex. It was the Powerpuff Girls' school_, Mark thought.

"Yeah..." Evan said. "It was a good school while it lasted..."

"I guess..." Mark said.

* * *

_**2 hours later...**_

Mark and Evan were still hanging out at Pokey Oaks, sitting against the barrier keeping them from falling into the infected zone. They were chatting about what missions Evan had been through, and then the experience that Mark had in Tech Square. Suddenly, right after Mark had completed his description of his Tech Square experience, Mark got a message on his NanoCom. He looked over at it. Its glowing blue screen stated:

**INCOMING MESSAGE FROM NUMBUH TWO**

**ACCEPT MESSAGE?**

**YES NO**

Mark instantly pressed "YES" on the screen, and Numbuh Two spoke across the NanoCom.

"Mark?" Numbuh Two's panic-filled voice echoed through the NanoCom.

"Yeah, Numbuh Two?" Mark said.

"We've got a big problem!" Numbuh Two said, still having a panicky sound in his voice.

"What is it?" Mark asked.

"JUST GET OVER HERE!" Numbuh Two said before the call was hung up.

"That isn't like Numbuh Two," Evan said. "Something horrific must have occurred. I don't know what else would cause him to behave like that."

"We should tell Numbuh Five!" The two instantly ran back to the parking lot of Malph's. Mark could see that Numbuh Five and Buttercup were chatting.

"Numbuh Five!" Evan yelled. Numbuh Five and Buttercup looked toward them. "Numbuh Two just sent Mark an urgent message. He wants us to get over to Sector V, **now**!"

"Now? Got it," Numbuh Five said. "Buttercup?"

"I got it," Buttercup said. "You guys better hold on."

"_Oh dear_," Mark thought, knowing exactly what was going to happen. They both held on to Buttercup, and suddenly, Mark felt like he was traveling extremely fast for a minute or so, and suddenly, he was on the ground of Hero Square.

Mark quickly looked at the Treehouse, thankfully to see it hadn't collapsed. It was still in the position it was, towering into the sky. Mark and Evan quickly jumped on the bounce pad closest to them, and flew upward to the surface. Not much after, they both ran into the tree house, and up the long spiral staircase. Mark attempted to call back Numbuh Two, and that attempt was indeed successful.

"Numbuh Two," Mark said into his NanoCom. "Where are you?"

Numbuh Two seemed to instantly respond. "I'm in the Hospital Section of the Treehouse."

"On my way," Mark said, before hanging up the call. Once entering the Mission Brief Room, Mark looked at Evan. "How do we get to the Hospital Section?"

"Follow me!" Evan said, as Mark followed Evan through many more hallways, across more platforms, and up multiple elevators, until finally they reached a small long white room that contained dozens of hospital beds. Other than a couple KND agents, Numbuh Two and Computress stood by one of them. When Mark and Evan ran over to them, he could see someone lying down on the hospital bed.

"Who's that?" Mark said.

Computress said, "She is Numbuh 108, joined the KND at 7 years of age, a former agent of Sector C, now an operative of Sector V, has taken part of 12 missions in Sector C, 15 missions in Sector V:

Profile: Gender: Female, Hair Color: Brown, Eye Color: Green, Age: 13 years old, Height: 5 feet 3 inches tall, Name-"

"OK, I don't think we need the in-depth description, because it's normally 7 pages long," Evan cut in. "I should know, mine was about 8."

Mark looked at Numbuh 108 in the hospital bed. She was wearing a white hospital dress, her hair scattered about the pillow. She seemed so innocent...

"What happened?" Mark asked.

Numbuh Two said, "A group of KND agents found her limping in the western part of Sector V, covered in Fusion Matter, just a few minutes ago. They instantly messaged me, and Computress and I got her to the hospital room just now. Before she went completely unconscious, she said,

"_You need to prepare... something horrible will happen soon ... They'll take down the..." _

"After that she instantly went unconscious."

"Wow," Mark said. "Do you know who this culprit is?"

"Well... we have a clue," Numbuh Two said.

"What is it?" Mark asked.

"She was holding this," Numbuh Two said. He handed Mark a strange note, that seemed to have Fusion Matter attached to the bottom of it, making most of the text completely unreadable. The following note states the readable parts:

"_Dear KND, _

_You are fools for sending spies to us Fusions. Our lairs are heavily guarded. We've sent this KND fool to you as a warning to not attack us. Also, you guys don't stand a chance! That's just how awesome we are! Also, I hope you realize that sending spies will just result in injuries, not help! _

_Our armies have wrecked you for months, to the point where we are literally one full takeover away from destroying you. But we'll lengthen the battle... And we lied. We're going to... fallen... Sector... on one of the following days of this month... if you do not comply... this is a warning to you..._

Mark didn't really know who sent the message, but he, without a doubt, knew it was a Fusion. But what Fusion was it?

"It's definitely a Fusion," Mark said out loud.

"Well, what Fusion could it be?" Evan said.

"I'm not sure," Numbuh Two said. "Numbuh 108 was supposed to be inspecting Genius Grove, but she recently transferred to Pokey Oaks, like she had stated yesterday. It all comes down to how the Fusion wrote the letter, and the behavior of the Fusion seems to be very much like mine. It also has similar hand-writing. It might be Fusion Numbuh Two."

"Do you know where he is?" Mark asked.

"Well, the most Fusion activity involving him has been occurring in the KND Training Area or Pokey Oaks Junior High."

"Maybe..." Mark said. "We could do a full attack on both locations?"

Numbuh Two thought about it for a while. "Maybe. I'll see what the other KND operatives have in mind," he said before walking out of the Hospital Section.

"I'm pretty sure that the others will want to kill Fusion Numbuh Two," Evan said as the two walked to the Mission Prep Room, ready to wreck a certain Fusion Numbuh Two.

"Barely anyone has had a chance to even kill a high-rank Fusion..."

* * *

**Alright, that's the fourth chapter! Ask whatever questions that you think will happen to Mark, Evan and everyone else in their journey to confront Fusion Numbuh Two, and those questions will be answered on Monday, when the next chapter will be released! Until then, bye!**


	5. Ambush

**Well, everyone! Welcome back to the story! Also, I know it's early, but, merry Christmas to all of you readers! In this next chapter, we shall delve into the plan of the squad teams to defeat Fusion Numbuh Two. What will happen, and can they stop them. I'm sure you know the answer, but let's start this thing!**

* * *

As Mark and Evan entered the Mission Prep Room, lined with weapons and gadgets the KND used, Evan put his hands on a certain type of rifle, which seemed to have a teddy bear corked in the shaft where a bullet would be. Mark decided to use his own weapons, to get used to them easier, especially his Lightning Sword, which he had only used during training, and hadn't used at all in combat yet.

Evan handed Mark part of an extra set of KND armor. The helmet was basically a football helmet painted black, and had the letters KND painted on it in white. The torso was an armor piece with yellow gloves (and yes, there was "KND" painted on the main piece).

"I can't find the other parts," Evan said. "Anyway, this is your second Fusion fight?"

"Yeah," Mark said, as he put his KND armor on over his own clothes. "My first was Fusion Buttercup. Of course I had help from other people-"

"Yeah, It's a good thing you managed to flip that lever, because if you couldn't, imagine what would happen."

Mark shuddered at the idea, and when they left the room to the hangar, many KND agents were cheering, meaning many of the KND agents wanted to destroy Fusion Numbuh Two.

"Now here's how we'll organize the attacks," Numbuh Two said, getting on top of a pedestal in the room. "Squads A-D will check the Pokey Oaks Junior High, while squads E-H will check the Training Area if it turns out that nothing can be found there. If either squad finds Fusion Numbuh Two, contact the other immediately."

"Agreed," every KND agent, including Mark, said. As many of the KND agents, including Mark, left the room to the Mission Prep room, Evan told Mark to follow him.

"Numbuh Five told me that you and I have been assigned to Attack Squad C, meaning we'll be headed to Pokey Oaks," Evan said as they walked into a gigantic hangar lined with SCAMPERs, each with a white letter on them. Mark and Evan walked into the SCAMPER with the white letter "C" painted crudely on it, and that SCAMPER and three other SCAMPERs all took off and flew toward Pokey Oaks at full speed.

_**16 minutes later...**_

As Mark, Evan, Buttercup and Numbuh Five stealthily approached the infected zone, Mark looked at it once more, in all its infected glory.

Outside the barrier, next to a strange device seemed to be another KND agent.

"Oh, hello, I believe the attack is happening now?" the agent asked.

"Yes, indeed," Numbuh Five said.

The KND agent suddenly glanced at Mark. "Oh, let me introduce myself to..."

"Mark," Mark said.

"Oh, yes. Mark, I'm Numbuh 1337."

When Mark looked back at the device, he saw some kind of giant glowing blue circle on the ground, which had four red things pointing out of opposite sides of the circle.

Evan walked up to the machine and said, "Come on," as he jumped into the glowing area caused by the four red points blasting energy into the center, instantly teleporting inside the barriers. On the other side of the barrier, Evan looked at Mark, who was now running toward the center, and after a flash of light, he suddenly realized he was inside the confinement of the Infected Zone barriers, but he still pretty dizzy after warping.

"Come on," Evan said as he and the other KND agents jumped across the floating cars, over the pool of Fusion Matter. "Buttercup's going to fly around the perimeter to check if we're being tricked."

Mark, trying to be careful, jumped onto the first car. It seemed to continuously float. But when he looked forward, he noticed one of the cars was floating downward into the pool of Fusion Matter. Mark quickly jumped onto the top of the car, and ended up hanging from the door of the car. Suddenly, that car seemed to rotate clockwise. After Mark got up, he jumped to the next one, and then to the next. He only had to jump one more car before he was with Evan. Evan was motivating him to jump, and when Mark did, the car suddenly lost complete balance, and started falling. Immediately, Mark jumped, but ended up hanging from the edge.

When Mark looked up, Evan was already there, holding his hand out. Mark quickly grabbed it, and was pulled up to the surface.

"Thanks, dude," Mark said, as he took out his Lightning Gun. As Mark opened the doors into the school, he looked to his right and could see Fusion KND operatives were in front of them, facing away. When he saw this, Mark and the others quickly dashed inside the school, and shut the doors.

"Where do you think Fusion Numbuh Two would be hiding?" Mark whispered to Numbuh Five, who was turning on a flashlight, because it was incredibly hard to see in the dark hallways. They walked down the main hallway, their weapons ready for anything.

"Well, according to Buttercup's X-ray abilities, the most Fusion Monsters are-" Numbuh Five suddenly pulled Mark and Evan into one door, and the KND operatives burst into the room opposite of where their door was.

Mark at first didn't know what they were hiding from, until he saw a glowing green figure appear out of nowhere. Mark instantly knew that that figure was a Fusion KND operative, but this Fusion KND agent looked very similar to Numbuh 108, other than the clear distinct differences, of course.

"Nobody here," the Fusion KND operative said into a walkie-talkie before continuing forward.

"You were saying?" Mark whispered.

As the groups went back into the hallway, Numbuh Five said, "According to Buttercup's X-ray abilites, the most current Fusion activity is in the gymnasium."

Mark looked over at a map of the school nearby. "According to this map," he said, "the gymnasium is pretty close."

"OK, let's get going!" Evan said, as the four operatives walked down the hallways until they finally reached a door covered with mist and Fusion Matter. Mark could slightly look through, and he saw.. eyes. Circular red eyes, and a dark green flight helmet with a reversed 2.

"Yep, he's in here," Mark said.

Mark and Evan were ready to fight Fusion Numbuh Two, so they slowly creaked the door open to look around. When Mark looked around the gymnasium he could see a variety of differences from what he speculated to be the original. He saw that most of the floor had become Fusion Matter, bits of gymnastics equipment were sticking out of the Fusion Matter, and two doors, where one was a hole in the wall, and the other was the one they were at, Their door connected to a metallic bridge leading a circular platform with control panels. There was also a hole in the ceiling shining onto the platform. That's when he saw Fusion Numbuh Two was talking into a communicator.

Just like with Fusion Buttercup, Fusion Numbuh Two had darker attire and was bigger, other than the green skin and his pilot goggles' eyes glowing red. He also seemed to be floating in the air due to this machine that he was using. It seemed to use two tennis rackets, causing propulsion by moving to make him levitate. He wasn't levitating at the moment, but he was pushing buttons.

"Those KND agents don't know what they're getting into," Fusion Numbuh Two said, looking into a security monitor. "_You _of all people should know that."

"Uh oh," Mark whispered, seeing that a camera had been set up by the door they were at. "I think our cover's been blown."

"Dang right, it's been blown," Fusion Numbuh Two said. "Now come out and show yourselves."

Having no choice, the squad went through the door.

"Planning to sneak attack on me?" Fusion Numbuh Two said, looking at them. "I thought you knew that wouldn't work! I've hyped up security here ever since Tech Square fell. And now- WHAT THE?!"

Mark had quickly brought out his Lightning Gun and had taken a shot at Fusion Numbuh Two. Fusion Numbuh Two, on the other hand, became filled with anger.

"How dare you!" Fusion Numbuh Two said. "Agents, attack them!"

Suddenly Fusion KND operatives began to drop from the ceiling, including Fusion Numbuh 108. As the Fusion Matter in the floor disappeared, and a metal floor took its place, The Fusion KND agents prepared their laser guns and fired at the KND agents, but they dodged.

"Mark, we've got the agents! You get the Fusion!" Numbuh Five said.

"Well, then," Fusion Numbuh Two said to Mark, before he launched some kind of green projectile at the ground below Mark. Suddenly the ground below Mark began to turn dark green.

"What is this?" Mark asked.

"That's an Eruption Attack!" Numbuh 1337 said. "Get out of there!" Mark, hearing this, dashed out of the location of the green ground, and suddenly that ground exploded with Fusion Matter. Mark was glad he wasn't in the path of that. But then he summoned Nano Buttercup out of his NanoCom, and Nano Buttercup attempted to beat up Fusion Numbuh Two, but Fusion Numbuh Two took the hits and sent Nano Buttercup flying into the wall. But Nano Buttercup continued fighting back, and after a while, Mark sent Nano Buttercup back into his NanoCom before blasting Fusion Numbuh Two again. But Fusion Numbuh Two suddenly blasted Mark's Lightning Gun out of his hands.

Mark quickly brought out his Lightning Sword, glowing blue at the edges, ready to attack. As he brought it out, he saw Fusion Numbuh Two floating downward toward a control panel. He sighed and said,

"Fools..."

Fusion Numbuh Two suddenly pressed a red button, and a timer came out of the wall at 45 seconds.

"I'd love to stay, but I've got more important things to do!" After a maniacal laugh, he suddenly flew up into the air using the device he had attached to his back, out of the hole in the ceiling.

_Wait, that timer, _Mark thought before he came to a realization. _That's a countdown! This place is gonna explode!_

"Buttercup!" Mark spoke into his NanoCom. "WE NEED YOU NOW!"

"What's going on?" Buttercup said.

"Fusion Numbuh Two's installed bombs in the school! And he's purposely trapped us in here!"

"ON MY WAY!" Buttercup said. Mere seconds later, Buttercup flew into the hole in the ceiling. Every KND agent in the room instantly held on, and in mere milliseconds, they were outside the infected zone.

"RUN!" Evan yelled, as the four quickly ran away from the infected zone. Mark, running as fast as he could, wishing he had some sort of speed boost, still remembered the countdown from the clock, and he was still counting it.

_5, 4, 3, 2, 1..._

Mark was fully aware of the deafening sounds and bright flashes behind him, so he continued running. When he looked back, he could see rock, metal, and Fusion Matter spewing into the sky. Mark and the others quickly hid behind nearby buildings, praying to not have gallons of Fusion Matter land on them, and thankfully, after the 20 terrifying seconds that the explosions lasted, they were safe to go out. When Mark looked back at the school, or at least, what was left of it, the deflector shields were starting to deactivate, and the massive hole in the ground that was the school, had Fusion Matter leaking down into the ocean down below. When he looked around the streets, he could see Fusion Matter everywhere.

"O.. M.. G," everyone said in unison, before Mark saw the dark blip in the sky that was Fusion Numbuh Two. He was flying toward a gigantic building with a big glass roof and a huge sign that said, "Malph's".

"We have to stop him!" Mark said. Suddenly a SCAMPER appeared at the scene. This SCAMPER had the crude white letter E on it, meaning that the squads that were meant to check Sector V got the message, and were now here.

"Need a lift?" Numbuh Two said, as everyone piled onto the SCAMPER. As it quickly flew off, Mark directed Numbuh Two toward his Fusion counterpart.

"Get me above him!" Mark said, and Numbuh Two did so. Once Mark got a good view of Fusion Numbuh Two, he reached for his Lightning Gun- wait, it wasn't there.

"_Where... where is it?" _Mark thought, before he came to a realization. _"Shoot! I left it in the school!" _Partially frustrated for not even remembering to grab it, he brought his hand toward the handle of the Lightning Sword.

"It'll have to do," Mark said, before jumping out of the SCAMPER, and onto Fusion Numbuh Two. The sudden weight shift couldn't keep the device stable, and after Mark sliced it off, the two started falling.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Fusion Numbuh Two screamed.

"Killing you," Mark said, as the two fell downward toward the roof of Malphs. Mark constantly stabbed Fusion Numbuh Two with the Lightning Sword until they were about to reach the glass roof. Mark quickly jumped off, and landed on the glass roof, but it broke, and he started falling. Mark braced himself, but he was swiped by green, and after a rushing noise, he was suddenly on the SCAMPER.

"You know, Mark," Numbuh Two said. "You're crazy, dude."

"It was the only alternative," Mark said. As the SCAMPER slowly landed downward through the hole in the roof of the gigantic mall, Mark looked out the cockpit window. When he looked down from the cockpit, he could see that Fusion Numbuh Two was still recovering from falling through the ceiling and many floors, next to what seemed like elevator ruins.

"Well, I'm a bit of a bind, aren't I?" Fusion Numbuh Two said, as he looked over at Mark,as he got out of the SCAMPER.

"Yep, and soon death," Mark said, as he got out, and KND agents began to kick down the front doors of Malph's. As they approached, Buttercup flew down and looked straight at Fusion Numbuh Two with a death stare.

"Well, then, it's a good thing I brought backup!" Fusion Numbuh Two said before pressing a button on his communication watch, and he started zooming around with his backup jetpack, hidden under his flying device. Instantly, many big bee-like Fusion creatures came out of nowhere. Each of them had a green part-metallic body, with four wings coming off of its sides. Coming from the bottom of it, was a dark blue tube that led to a small red satellite-like dish. The thing that Mark got scared about was, at the center of the dish, was a gigantic needle, at least 3 inches in length, and was about 1/8 of an inch thick.

Mark instantly swung his Lightning Sword at Fusion Spawns that approached him. When he hit them with the blade, it caused the Fusion Spawn to fly backwards, with electrical pulses beaming through the Fusion liquid that made up their bodies. Mark began to grin at the result of swinging his blade, before he heard a buzzing sound behind him.

In response, Mark instantly turned around and swung his sword of the source of the buzzing, and ended up slamming the end of his blade into the face of a... whatever the bug-like creature is.

"What are these things?" Mark asked.

"Watch out!" Numbuh Two said, "They're Cyber Stingers, one of the many groups of Fusion soldiers in Pokey Oaks. When you're fighting them, you just need to remember one thing: Don't let them sting you! We've had a lot of victims, and they haven't been able to recover for days!"

Mark swung his Lightning Sword into the face of a Cyber Stinger again, before Evan came to help.

"Let's fight them off together!" Evan said, as he brought out another sword of his own. Granted, it didn't seem to use electricity in its strikes, but it still did a hefty amount of damage to Fusion Spawns and Cyber Stingers. So, for about the next few minutes, as Fusion Numbuh Two was being chased by Buttercup, the group fended off the Cyber Stingers, and they were doing pretty well. Until... Cyber Stingers were ambushing them from above, and a couple of the KND agents nearly got stung. Mark didn't really know what happened when a Cyber Stinger stung you, and when he tried to imagine, he ended up thinking things that I should probably not mention.

After 30 seconds of a wave of Fusion Spawns and Cyber Stingers from the eastern side, a lone Cyber Stinger snuck out of a vent in the western side of the building, and snuck up on Mark. As Mark fended off Fusion Spawns at close range, he was completely unaware of it, until he heard that dreaded buzzing. He was about to turn around and slam his blade into the Cyber Stinger... but it was too late. Searing pain was already going straight through his entire body. Mark couldn't even scream. He just stood there, looking at the Cyber Stinger, with eyes straight open, as time seemed to slow down.

"MARK!" Evan screamed. In response, Numbuh Two and Numbuh Five looked over and nearly gasped in shock at the sight in front of them. They thought that he was going to go unconscious, or maybe worse.

But then Mark did something that no other victim of a Cyber Stinger's sting had ever done. He started moving his arm upward, and slammed it into the Cyber Stinger's face again, cutting it in half. Then, he pulled out the dead Cyber Stinger's stinger, despite the obvious pain, and threw it on the floor. He looked up to his right, and saw that Buttercup had trapped Fusion Numbuh Two on the 5th floor in a headlock.

"Get off of me, you horrendous creature!" Fusion Numbuh Two yelled, desperately trying to break free.

"It's a **POWERPUFF**!" Buttercup said, keeping him pinned down, and tearing at his jetpack, eventually ripping it off and throwing it over the balcony. As Mark momentarily saw it burst into pieces as it hit the floor, he ran up the long staircase, unaware of many of the KND agents staring in awe as they fought off the Fusion forces.

Once Mark turned around the corner, Buttercup stopped pinning Fusion Numbuh Two, and started blocking all of the exits with green impenetrable energy. In this situation, Fusion Numbuh Two was cornered, and he just looked at Mark, slowly approaching him.

Having no other weapons to fend himself off except a laser pistol, Fusion Numbuh Two took that out and tried to fire it at Mark. But Mark merely blocked the blasts, and continued walking toward Fusion Numbuh Two. Mark merely grinned at what he was going to do right when he got to Fusion Numbuh Two.

Once he reached Fusion Numbuh Two, he swung the Lightning Sword at him, but Fusion Numbuh Two quickly dodged, but Mark already knew where he was going to jump when he dodged, so he quickly moved his sword to the left, causing some Fusion Matter to fly outward from Fusion Numbuh Two's body.

Instantly afterward, Mark continued slashing and attacking and slicing at Fusion Numbuh Two as they moved toward the ledge of the 5th floor. When they finally got to the ledge of the balcony, Mark took his Lightning Sword, and thrust it forward and straight through Fusion Numbuh Two, causing many volts of electricity to circulate through Fusion Numbuh Two.

Mark merely grinned at the sight of this. "This is what you get for everything you've done to hurting Numbuh 108!"

Fusion Numbuh Two looked back at Mark, and said, "You'll be feeling so much worse soon... Oh, and you've got the wrong Fusion..."

Mark instantly became confused. "What?"

Fusion Numbuh Two merely smiled, and fell over the rail of the balcony, bending it, and fell straight down to the ground floor of Malph's, taking Mark's Lightning Sword with him.

Mark's confusion about what Fusion Numbuh Two said was short-lived because he suddenly felt like he was going to go unconscious. And he did go unconscious, and he fell off the balcony.

Everyone had another quick feeling of terror before Buttercup flew forward and caught Mark. After a group of KND agents came out of the SCAMPER with some kind of stretcher (Numbuh Two had told them to), Buttercup placed Mark on the stretcher, and the agents quickly wheeled Mark back into the SCAMPER.

Every KND agent piled onto the SCAMPERs before they took off, exiting the ruins of Malph's. Numbuh Two was going to say, "Kids Next Door, mission accomplished!" but Evan suddenly said,

"What's gonna happen to Mark?!" Evan asked with worry.

"We might be able to get him to the Hospital Wing in time. After that, we'll have to see what happens next," Numbuh Two said.

And so, the SCAMPER sped forward toward Sector V, which from Pokey Oaks, was not visible. All that was noticeable was an infinite sea of green, and a giant planet in the skies above.

_Mandark's Laboratory_

A Fusion Spawn slithered toward a Fusion in the shadows, looking at a large computer system. This Fusion was tall for a human, but short by Fusion standards. There were also what seemed to be spikes coming out of its hair.

"What is it?" the Fusion said.

Yes, well, we have a situation," the spawn said in a creepy, distorted voice. "News has been acquired that Fusion Numbuh Two has been defeated, by a certain kid named Mark Emeron, who appeared suddenly at the battle of Tech Square yesterday." The Fusion Spawn jumped on a button on the computer , which projected a screenshot of Mark, attacking Fusion Numbuh Two with the final blows of his Lightning Sword. "This photo has been acquired by our most stealthy Fusion spies."

In response to this, the Fusion grinned and turned around to face the Fusion Spawn. "So... we managed to trick them after all! They just won't think things through, will they? All is going according to plan... Inform the others that this war is finally getting interesting..."

* * *

**Uh oh! What's going to happen to Mark? Will they save him? Well, stay tuned for the next chapter on Sunday, or maybe next Monday! **


	6. Recovery Before Preparation

**Yo, guys! Sorry this chapter is a bit late, but I've been having some recent computer problems, but they've been fixed now, despite delaying this chapter's release. Enjoy this long chapter, and ask what you want in the form of a review!**

* * *

Seconds after the KND SCAMPERs had landed in the Treehouse hangar, many KND agents, including Numbuh Five, Evan and Numbuh Two, were already wheeling Mark up to the Hospital Wing. They placed Mark instantly in the nearest bed that was available, and attached the heartbeat monitor and a couple of extracting tubes to him. His heartbeat was normal.

"We won't be able to get all that Fusion Matter out in time!" Evan said, as Numbuh Two was pressing buttons on a control panel near Mark's hospital bed, suddenly morphing his current clothing into white hospital clothing. There was also another message on the screen, saying, "Mark Emeron's old clothes will have been transported to the nearest closet."

"Well, do you have any other ideas?" Numbuh Five said. In response to this, Evan thought for a minute, until an idea popped up in his head. _Mark's NanoCom! Surely Mark's Buttercup nano has some sort of healing power!_

Evan suddenly held on to Mark's wrist, and took control of his NanoCom. He pressed, "NANO MENU", then Mark's Buttercup nano, then "POWERS". What Evan could see was, Brute Blast, Miss Fire, and Rallying Cry, which was considered a Healing Power that could heal multiple people at once.

"Numbuh Two, I think I know what we can do!" Evan said, as he clicked "SUMMON NANO". Red lights emerged from microscopic transmitters, forming the Buttercup nano.

Almost instantly after she was sent out, the Buttercup nano noticed the problem Mark was in. She seemed to become angered at Mark's condition, and suddenly her hands began to glow white, and suddenly, she raised up her hands and screamed, which suddenly caused a beam of white light to come out of Mark, and even out of Numbuh 108, a few beds away.

"What did you do?" Numbuh Five asked the Buttercup nano.

"I just healed him, what did you think I did?" the Buttercup nano said.

"OK, we get it," Evan said, bringing the Buttercup nano back into the NanoCom. "So wait, did the Nano take out all the Fusion Matter in his bloodstream or something?"

"By the looks of it," Fusion Numbuh Two said, looking through some sort of scanner, which detected Fusion Matter inside a body. There were no signals. "That's exactly what the Nano did."

Evan then asked, "Well, how long will he be out until he wakes up?"

"Maybe a few hours," Numbuh Five said. "C'mon, let's give him some space." And with that, the group of KND agents walked out of the room, as robotic arms suddenly came out of the ceiling, and removed the extraction tubes from Mark.

* * *

Mark's eyes slowly opened to the sound of a series of beeps. Once his vision became clear, he found that he was in a white room. A white rectangular room, that looked identical to the Hospital Wing he had met up with Numbuh Two and Computress in.

That's when he remembered what happened before he went unconscious, and he determined that he must have been taken to the Hospital Wing. When Mark felt something strange around his abdomen, he lifted up his shirt and saw that large tensor bandages had been wrapped around where he had been stung. He could also see a dark stain at the main location of his stinging.

Mark looked around the room, examining the details. He saw that he was in white hospital patient clothing, and that his hospital bed was only a few beds away from Numbuh 108's. After looking closer, he could see that Numbuh 108 was still in the bed. When he looked to his left, he could see a heartbeat monitor and detached extraction tubes.

Mark decided to get up and sat at the edge of the bed. He sighed and looked at his NanoCom, to see what time it was.

"3:48 PM?" Mark said, a little bewildered that he was asleep that long. "Dang, I was out for a while!"

Mark got up, and started walking down the long room that the Hospital Wing was. After about 20 seconds, he managed to get to a closet with a sign on it. The sign said:

**THIS CLOSET WILL BE RESERVED FOR MARK EMERON UNTIL THIS SIGN DISAPPEARS**

A little bewildered by what the sign said, he opened the door, and there was his clothes. His... ragged, torn, and somewhat dirty, clothes. The jacket was ripped in the vest, the entire shirt had a hole in the front due to the stinger, and mud had slightly fused with the white parts of clothing. The pants were incredibly dirty, and the shoes could barely fully strap anymore. Mark was sure that there was a bit of Fusion Matter in his jacket pockets as well.

In fact, that Upgrade Jacket, Mechomorph Denims, and the Upgrade Shoes were the only actual clothing he had worn the entire time he was in this infected Future... well other than that KND armor he had worn to battle against Fusion Numbuh Two. So, he reluctantly closed the closet door behind himself, and a few minutes later, he walked out of the closet, and didn't even notice that when he closed the door, the sign was gone.

* * *

After about 5 minutes, Mark was hopelessly lost in the Treehouse. Even when he had been in it many times, it was so big, it was almost like a total maze. For a moment, Mark thought of how long a Hide-And-Seek game would take in the Treehouse, until he saw Evan walking down a hallway to his left.

"Hey, you're up!" Mark heard Evan say.

"Yeah," Mark said. "Has anything happened while I was out?"

"Nope, not a thing," Evan said. "All we've had is just one Fusion Spawn climbing up the northern cliff. That's it. I think that after we defeated Fusion Numbuh Two, Fuse's army in our sector has retreated. I don't think they'll have any attacking plans for the next few days or so."

"Well, that at least gives us some time to cool down after two major battles in two days! And to think this is only my second day here..." They started walking toward a spiral staircase. After walking down it, they were outside the Treehouse, on the floating ground. Upon exiting, Mark looked up to see Planet Fusion staring down, metaphorically, on them. Even though it looked like it wasn't in a difference in the sky at first glance, after glancing back a few times, he noticed it was bigger. Slightly bigger.

"Yeah," Evan said, looking at Planet Fusion in the sky. "My experience of this war has been nowhere near as traumatic as yours. I mean, you arrived during a major battle, you watched many heroes die, and you got stung by a Cyber Stinger... and lived!"

"Let's not think of it right now, OK?" Mark said, because his wound from the stinger had started to hurt again, so Evan quickly agreed to stop talking about it.

"Hey, you two," Mark heard Numbuh Two say. Mark turned around, and could see him walking down one of the stone pathways. "Can you guys come with me momentarily?"

"Sure thing," Mark and Evan both said as they followed Numbuh Two down the pathway. Mark wasn't sure where they were going until he noticed that next to the windows of the KND Treehouse entrance, there seemed to be multiple KND agents standing around. They all seemed to have some kind of beam coming out of an extra headset attached to their helmets, beaming out an icon of a specific piece of clothing above them, such as shirts, pants and shoes. One of them also had the icon of a potion beaming above him. He also noticed Computress was coming out of the entrance door to the Treehouse.

"Greetings, Mark," Computress said. "Glad to see you're awake."

"Yeah," Mark said before turning to Numbuh Two. "So, Numbuh Two, what is it you wanted to show us?"

"Well, Mark, it's actually two things. First, Mark, we managed to salvage most of Fusion Numbuh Two's Fusion Matter, as well as my spare flight helmet that was used to form his Fusion, which you can actually use to create a Numbuh Two nano." He went inside momentarily and brought out a huge plastic bucket filled with Fusion Matter, and a flight helmet that looked exactly like Numbuh Two's flight helmet.

"Another nano?" Mark asked. Regardless, he heard his NanoCom beeping. He looked at it, and it had one option on the screen. It said:

**SPECIAL FUSION MATTER IN CLOSE PROXIMITY TO NANO-COM**

**NANO CREATION POSSIBLE**

**SYNTHESIZE NANO?**

**YES NO**

Mark clicked "YES" on the NanoCom, and looked straight to the container of Fusion Matter. A white light was coming out of the NanoCom and into the container, lifting every single particle of Fusion Matter into the air, as well as the flight helmet. Suddenly the white beam turned green, and then disappeared. The Fusion Matter was now being suspended in mid-air, before it wrapped itself around the flight helmet, and it started to glow bright white, and then blue. While this was happening, strange rings will pulsating rapidly around the sphere. The Fusion Matter then began to take the shape of a miniature Numbuh Two, and then the blue light faded, as well as the rings, which exploded into glittering sparks.

"Go, KND!" the Numbuh Two nano said, before hovering over to Mark.

"Why, hello," Mark said. "So, what are your powers?"

"Well, you have them in your NanoCom, don't you?" the Numbuh Two nano said,.

"Oh yeah, I do," Mark said as he looked in his NanoCom and checked Nano Numbuh Two's power list. From what he could see, there were two powers listed: Speed Boost and Safety Teleportation.

"OK," Mark said, summoning the Numbuh Two nano back into the NanoCom. "So what else did you want to show me?"

"Well, it's so you can get a clearer understanding of how our stations worked during our Fusion attacks," Numbuh Two said.

"OK," Mark said. "Does it have anything to do with those people over there?" He pointed to the people with the icons floating over their heads.

"Actually, that's exactly what I wanted to show you. Since the Fusion attacks began, the normal stores all went out, and the shopkeepers went to stations all over Arkadex, to either sell weapons, clothing or other necessary items. You can sell items to them, and you can buy items from them. Go on, try buying from each of them."

Mark looked back at Numbuh Two, and then they both looked at Computress.

"Oh, that's right," Computress said. "Mark, let me give you some Taros." She wrote into her digital clipboard, and suddenly, Mark heard a sound from his NanoCom. When he looked down, he saw a Taro Counter in the bottom right of the NanoCom screen, which was counting up rapidly. As Mark knew, Taros were Arkadex's basic unit of currency. He also knew they were copper coins which were about the width of an Earth quarter. If you were compare a Taro to Earth money, a Taro would be equivalent to about 15 US cents.

Mark continued looking at the Taro counter in the NanoCom. It was counting up higher... and higher... and higher. It was currently at 1000... now 2000... 5000... 10000... 15000... 20000... 30000... 40000... 45000...

The Taro counter finally stopped at 50,000 Taros. Mark was in shock at the amount of taros he had received. Dozens of thoughts were zooming through his mind, including,

"_50,000 taros to only test out buying? Has the value of a Taro decreased or something at the moment?" _

"_Why has Computress given me this many taros?"_

Computress seemed to somehow know that Mark was thinking that question, so she said, "All those taros also include the rewards you received because of your contributions to the Battle of Tech Square and defeating Fusion Numbuh Two."

Mark, still amazed, continued listening to Computress, who was now saying, "When Morbucks Savings and Loan, the main bank of Arkadex, was constantly bombared by Fusion meteors about 3 months ago, and eventually destroyed, Dexlabs and Mandark Industries decided that they would make all taros digital, so that the main storage of Taros would not be destroyed. Go on, buy some stuff."

Mark walked up to three of the four vendors, buying one item each from them. After that, he looked into his NanoCom's Taro Count, and found out that it had gone down by 700 taros. He then looked into his NanoCom, and clicked on "INVENTORY". When he looked in, it was completely empty... well, except for three different objects.

There was a green T-Shirt that had a wide yellow stripe down the middle from the collar, with a small symmetrical scalene triangle not far downward from the collar, pointing downward in one slot. There were also simple red shorts that ended at the knees in the next slot. In another slot, there were mostly white shoes, with gray quarters, mostly red welts, and a green area on the top of the shoe heading from the insole to the tip, where dark green straps were.

"These should work well," Mark said. "Uh..." He looked back at Computress and Numbuh Two.

Almost knowing exactly what Mark was thinking, Computress said, "Don't worry, Mark. The NanoCom has designed everyone's clothing so that it will glow and then morph into the molecular structure of the targeted clothing."

That statement made Mark wonder, "Computress, how do you-"

Computress suddenly said, "My sensors convert brainwaves and scan facial emotions, and then combine those to come up with an estimation for what you're thinking."

_"OK..."_ Mark thought. _"So you're basically a mind-reader..."_

Mark clicked on each of the clothes, checking to see if what Computress said was true. And when he clicked on each of them, three menus popped up simultaneously, each projecting a menu of the specific bit of clothing, which showed stats, level, and other things. Then another window popped up on the bottom part of the screen, which said "EQUIP". Mark clicked that, and his original clothing began to glow. As they glowed, Mark could notice them changing shape, texture and size. Eventually, the glow faded away, and Mark was wearing the clothes that he had previously seen in his NanoCom.

"Man, that's much better than those messed-up Upgrade Mechomorph clothes..." Evan said. "No offense."

"Don't worry, none taken," Mark said, before he remembered something. "By the way, Evan... what happened to my Lightning Sword? All I can remember is stabbing Fusion Numbuh Two, and then nothing. Did you guys salvage that too?"

"Oh yes, we did," Numbuh Two said, as he pressed a couple buttons on his blue NanoCom, and then the Lightning Sword materialized in his hand. He then tossed it to Mark, and Mark caught it by the handle.

"By the way..." Mark said. "Numbuh Two, when are we going to start working on rebuilding that time machine?"

"Oh, yes," Computress said. "We were going to start working on it in a couple of days. In the meantime, how about you go hang out with Evan? You both deserve a break."

"Yes!" Evan said. "Mark, there's an X-Console 2000 and a couple of recent video games up in the Treehouse's TV Room!"

"Sweet!" Mark said, as the two ran into the Treehouse. Computress and Numbuh Two just looked surprised.

"They really are good friends," Numbuh Two said.

"Sensors agree," Computress said. Then both looked at Planet Fusion in the sky, looming over Arkadex. "But we've got bigger problems to worry about..."

"What do you mean?" Numbuh Two said.

"I was reading and decoding Mark's brainwaves when he was unconscious, and there was this one moment that he was remembering before Fusion Numbuh Two was defeated. It seemed that before Fusion Numbuh Two fell, he said that... we defeated the wrong Fusion..."

Numbuh Two pondered what Computress said before responding, "Are you sure? For all we know, Fusion Numbuh Two may have said that to fool us."

"Yes, that makes sense," Computress said. "Still, we should take care anyway. They could be attacking, and they could use any measure possible..."

* * *

As another new day settled in on Arkadex, the KND still went around on their normal guard duties, despite no Fusion activity occurring. They merely continued guarding because they thought that if they stopped, their Treehouse would be vulnerable to Fusion attacks.

Meanwhile, Mark and Evan were hanging out in the Treehouse TV Room, playing video games (without any of the materials for the time machine, or any clue on how to get them, they were allowed to have video game breaks). They were playing one of the many racing games in the room, and were racing on the "Dexlabs Racing Center" map. It was basically a black and blue oval border, that flashed blue sometimes. Mark was in the green car, and Evan was racing in the white car.

"Get out the way, Evan!" Mark said, as he pressed a button on his controller, causing a spike on the center of the tire of Mark's car to appear. Mark slammed his spiked tire of his car into one of the other tires of Evan's car.

"Hey, you'll pay for that!" Evan said, as he grabbed a boost power-up and steered his car towards Mark on its last tire power. The race was getting extremely hyped, until Numbuh Five came into the room.

"Hey, Mark! Evan!" Numbuh Five had to yell because the audio on the game was so loud. Mark heard her, however, and clicked the pause button.

"Aww, why did you-" Evan said before Mark pointed at Numbuh Five. The two immediately looked at her. "I mean... Yes, Numbuh Five?"

"Numbuh Two has requested that you two meet up with all the KND engineers in the newly built Time Machine Construction Room. Come on, follow me."

"So that was the clatter going on..." Mark said, shutting down the video game. While slightly disappointed at this, Mark understood that orders came first. The two walked with Numbuh Five up a countless number of stairs, hallways and platforms, before they reached this new room, which Mark remembered not being there before. It was dome-shaped and was about 2 stories in radius (so it was pretty big). Once they reached the room, Numbuh Five left to go somewhere else.

"Greetings, Mark," Computress said. "Now, onto the main topic. Since we need to get you back to the past, we thought that during the time of no Fusion attacks, building the time machine seemed like a good idea."

"Do we have the materials?" Mark said.

"No, but we do plan on constructing a blue-print, so we have an idea on what to make."

"Mark, do you still remember what the time machine looked like?" Evan said, in hopes that they could build on that.

"Sorta..." Mark said. "Can I have a paper and a pencil?"

After Mark was handed those things, he instantly began drawing from memory. Even though he had been through extreme events in the past few days, he still remembered most of what the time machine looked like, like the structure, and wire locations in the front, as well as design, but he didn't know how it worked. But he still thought that knowing what it looked like was a good start. After almost 30 minutes of detailed drawing, he finally handed the paper to Numbuh Two.

"This is what I think the time machine looked like," Mark said as he handed the paper over to Numbuh Two.

"Hmm... very detailed," Numbuh Two said.

"I didn't really get a good glimpse on how much it worked, though, so I don't know its exact functions."

"Well, it's a start. We can at least get the structural design done. After that, we'll have to call in Mandark."

"Mark," Computress said. "Just in case we accidentally lose that sketch, may I scan it so we will still have it?"

"Sure..." Mark said as he lifted the paper to Computress. Lights suddenly projected out of her eyes, which covered every square millimeter of the paper. After the scanning lights she used went out, she handed the paper back to Mark, who put it a nearby table.

"So... how are we gonna make this?" Mark said.

"Well, we plan on using a lot of 2x4s (wooden planks) to design the outsides-"

"You do realize that would not work at all," a snide voice from behind them said. Mark and Numbuh Two were surprised by it, and when they turned around, they saw somebody else coming into the room. "It's almost as if you don't know what you're doing."

This tall person had short black hair, and evil-eye-shaped glasses. He was wearing a normal white shirt with a yellow and black-striped tie. He also had a small tool belt that held things like ray guns, advanced tools, etc. But the strangest things about this person was that he had a gigantic cape, that went around the back half of his head, and then outward. Going down, the cape split into many slits that hit the ground. Mark immediately knew who was person was: Mandark, Dexter's rival.

"Hey, you three," Mandark said, pointing at a group of KND agents bringing crates full of wooden planks to the time machine's base. "Those won't be necessary."

Even though the KND agents didn't understand why they had to put down those crates, they knew that he was Mandark, so they did anyway.

"Mandark," Numbuh Two said. "Didn't expect you to come so early!"

"Whatever," Mandark said, throwing Numbuh Two's statement out the door. "Now, back to what I was saying. Why do you think that wooden planks, which are flimsy building blocks, are exactly the same as reinforced steel? I weep for humanity..."

"We were only using the 2x4s to build a 3D blueprint, as to how it should look!"

"But what about the actual machine?"

Numbuh Two froze for a moment and began to mutter angrily, "Isn't that your job to get the materials?"

"Guys!" Mark suddenly shouted, causing everyone in the room to look at him, including Mandark.

"Hey..." Mandark said. "You're that kid who stopped Fusion Buttercup **and**Fusion Numbuh Two! I heard about both of those wins, and they both had your name involved in it! Hold on, let me scan you!"

Mandark pulled a device that looked a lot like the one Mark used on his way to Dexlabs, and Mark was suddenly surrounded in red light. After 5 seconds, the light went away, and Mark's vision went light bluish.

"Oh my," Mandark said, as a 3-D model of Mark appeared with red particles emitting from it. "You seem to be radiating lots of Imaginary Energy! Dexter did use some of that in his time machine!"

Mandark put the device away, and said, "You could be a really good poster boy for my-"

"No thanks," Mark said, clearly shocking Mandark.

"OK, let's get back on topic," Numbuh Two said. "So if our design is not working, what is your plan?"

"Well," Mandark said. "We need reinforced steel, at least two devices or artifacts that can create wormholes through time, and some other necessary items."

"Like what?"

"The wormhole stabilizer, the energy connectors, the wormhole-connection computer, the time-travel connection controller, and the energy booster!"

"How do you know that Dexter made the time machine with those?" Computress asked.

"Well, I studied Dexter's time machine blueprints after I managed to hack into his files (it was a pain) and downloaded it for myself during the battle of Tech Square, when the firewall systems were completely shut down!"

"**YOU HACKED DEXTER'S FILES?" **

"**WHY DO YOU CARE? YOU'RE JUST A ROBOT!" **

"CAN WE JUST STOP ARGUING?" Evan yelled. "If we keep arguing, we're never going to get Mark back to the past."

"Exactly, Evan," Mark said. "Can we just get working on that blueprint?"

"Fine," Mandark angrily muttered.

"OK," Numbuh Two said, now pointing to a group of KND agents. "2x4s, please!"

As confused as the three KND agents were, they picked up the crates anyway, and walked over to the KND engineers. Within minutes, they had almost finished constructing its base, and then they were going to work on the final part, which was the spherical interior.

"So how similar does it look at the moment, Mark?" Numbuh Two said.

"Looks pretty good," Mark said, after gluing one of the wooden blocks to another. "Hey, Evan, can you help me with gluing these blocks together?"

"Sure thing," Evan said, as they finally connected and glued the block together. "Whew, the base is finally done!"

"Yeah," Mark said, "But we still gotta construct the sphere that the inside is in." Mark looked back at the sketch he had drawn, before saying, "Man... it's a lot more complicated than I thought."

"What's going on over here?" A female voice was suddenly heard from the entrance. When Mark turned to see where it was coming from, he could see a KND agent coming into the room. She was Numbuh 108. She looked surprisingly different from when she was in the Hospital Wing. She was now wearing small white braids, and she was now wearing the typical green KND armor. She also was holding one of those Teddy-blasting rifles, or "T.H.U.M.P.E.R" or "**T**eddy **H**urling **U**ltra **M**icrowave **P**owered **E**jection **R**ifle" as Evan told him.

"Numbuh 108, you're finally awake!" Numbuh Two said, before joking, "Did you have a good rest?"

"Did you get him?" Numbuh 108 asked, completely ignoring Numbuh Two.

"You mean the Fusion?" Mark asked. "Yeah, we got him."

Numbuh 108 sighed with relief, and said, "Good, that's one crisis averted, for a while, at least. Anyways, what is this whole thing you're doing?"

"Well... Mark," Numbuh Two said, making a glare at Mark to signify that it was him. "He showed up out of the blue, well, more like green, during the battle of Tech Square. Not that much later, we found out that Dexter had sent this kid into the future, but farther than planned due to his sister Dee Dee messing up the experiment. Dexter said, before leaving this planet, that Mark needed to be sent back to the past."

"OK..." Numbuh 108 said. "So what are you doing here?"

"We are building a 3-D blueprint of the time machine to get an understanding of what the real one will look like."

"Alright, so how can I help?"

"Well," Evan said, "You can help us finish constructing this thing."

"Sure," Numbuh 108 said. So, within the 10 or so minutes that it took to finish fully constructing the "framework prototype" of the time machine, everyone in the room worked together to finish it. Mandark had even called in Mandroids to help them build it. Now the structure that they had made out of 2x4 looked kinda like the frame for the time machine. Mark sat inside it, and it seemed very similar to the time machine he had been to earlier.

"So, Mark, how similar does it look now?" Numbuh Two asked.

It seems exactly the same. But where are we gonna get-"

_**BOOM!**_

Suddenly a massive explosion could be heard from outside the Time Machine Construction Room, and a shockwave shook the room, which not even the glue could stand, and the entire 3-D blueprint collapsed.

"WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?" Mark and Numbuh 108 both screamed.

Numbuh Two sighed angrily and said into his communicator, "Numbuh 25, I told you to not to set off the explosives yet!"

"We had to!" a gruff voice said on the other side. "We just discovered that Fusion Computress was in there!"

"Wait, what's going on?" Mark said, having not heard what was spoken over Numbuh Two's NanoCom. He dashed out of the room and then throughout the Treehouse, followed by Evan and Numbuh 108. Thankfully, the NanoCom had now downloaded a 3-D map of the Sector V treehouse, so he could easily get around. Once Mark finally got out of the Treehouse, he looked around for any wreckage.

When Mark looked toward the Training Area infected zone, it basically looked almost exactly like the wreckage of the Pokey Oaks school, except the tall redwood trees that were riddled throughout the area were burning and crumbling. Many Fusion Spawns were fleeing from the fires, and the containment shields were turning off. Mark even saw a couple more explosions between the trees.

"What are they doing?" Mark said.

"Oh, that?" Numbuh Five's voice said from their left. "They were planning on blowing up the Infected Zone, since no Fusion activity has been occurring there for the past month. But now we just found out that Fusion Computress has been hiding in there, so Numbuh 25 decided to blow it up now, even though Numbuh Two's a bit mad at him..."

Mark, Evan and Numbuh 108 zip-lined down to the wreckage, except many KND operatives would not let them pass, as what looked like Fusion Computress was having a fight with a tall, burly, black-haired KND agent who seemed to prefer melee fighting. After a few minutes, he brought down the Fusion by disconnecting its Fusion wires from its multi-cellular core, making it explode, and all the Fusion Matter that made up Fusion Computress all became a puddle on the floor, while all the metallic parts melted into the Fusion Matter, except for what looked like a memory chip.

After the KND agent, who Mark presumed to be Numbuh 25, pressed a button on his Nano-Com, the same white light that had come out of Mark's NanoCom when he made the Numbuh Two nano projected into the Fusion Matter, before rising into a floating sphere along with the memory chip. The sphere began to turn yellow, and after a bright flash, a Nano appeared... in a Computress nano.

"Oh, hey," Numbuh 25 said.

"Salutations," the Computress nano said. After Numbuh 25 sent the Computress nano back into his NanoCom, everyone turned to watch the final few trees that were once part of the KND training area collapse to the ground. After that, everyone went back to the Treehouse to do their normal routine again.

"Well, that was interesting," Evan said, after the two bounced up to the Treehouse. "But now that we've "finished" the blueprint, you want to go back to that race we were doing?"

"Heck yeah!" Mark said as they both ran into the Treehouse.

* * *

_Mandark's Laboratory_

The spike-haired short Fusion approached another Fusion, sitting in a gigantic throne that would be Mandark's. The Fusion looked a lot like Mandark, except for the different-coloring clothing, glowing green skin, and glowing red eyes.

"Should we send out our forces to attack them?" the short Fusion said to Fusion Mandark. "Our forces are all ready."

Fusion Mandark thought it over briefly before saying, "No."

Somewhat surprised, the short Fusion said, "What? Why not?"

"First off, this was ordered by Lord Fuse. If you really want to argue with him, go ahead," Fusion Mandark said, and the short Fusion and all the Fusion Spawns in the area cringed at the thought. "The plan is, we don't attack them on the 20th, so they think they're safe, and a couple days later, we will strike!"

"And what of the girl?"

"Let her believe what she wants-"

"I mean the OTHER girl."

"Oh, _her_... Keep her in the cryogenic vault until she is no longer needed as a hostage. It seems that they've already forgotten about her anyway..."

* * *

**Well, there we go! The biggest chapter I've made so far! Well, the next two are gonna be pretty easy to write, since they both contain some interesting and action-packed stuff! See you guys soon, maybe in the next couple days!**


	7. A Mutant Memory

**Hello, everyone! I'm sorry for the delay, because I've been trying to have a holiday break, but I did finish this chapter AND the next one, so the next one WILL be posted tomorrow! Anyways, this chapter contains a ton of action, so good luck!**

* * *

It had been a couple days, and still no disaster whatsoever had occurred. The only strange thing that occurred was the fact that nothing bad had happened. Mark kinda expected this, since he never would believe that the Fusions would reveal their secret plans to the enemy. But yet he couldn't understand why he thought they hadn't stopped them (he had forgotten completely about Fusion Numbuh Two saying that they had defeated the wrong Fusion).

Mandark had searched for the materials for the time machine, and found that they were in Mandark Industries, but the only problem was that the entrance to his infected lab had now been sealed completely shut and impossible to get into, due to the fact that it was now an infected zone. Nothing he could do could breach his own lab, and his passwords had been completely swapped somehow. So Mandark was now trying to get into Dexter's old house and tunnel inside his own lab from there, but extremely high amounts of defenses had somehow been put up without Dexter's approval, and he couldn't breach them.

Numbuh 108 was very relieved that no disaster had occurred, and was determined that the Fusions merely lied to her just to set up paranoia. But she couldn't help but get the feeling that whatever catastrophe she thought would happen was just postponed.

Since the events of the last chapter, Mark had actually become an official member of the Kids Next Door for the time being. Ever since the loss of Numbuh 317 to some unknown Fusion creature, Mark had replaced him in the Kids Next Door.

Mark and Evan were currently patrolling in the northern section of Pokey Oaks (well, Evan was, but Mark wanted to chat with him). As Evan walked holding his normal teddy bear rifle, Mark carried a special type of gun that was big but powerful. A couple days after the events of defeating Fusion Numbuh Two, Mark had bought two new weapons, the Surge Cannon and the Quartz Hammer. The Surge Cannon looked like a gigantic plug end with multiple electricity chambers and a small power core in the middle of the entire gun. The Quartz Hammer was a gigantic hammer made from shiny purple crystals. Mark tested them both out on random Fusion Spawns, and they both were extremely effective. The Surge Cannon left some Fusion Spawns flinching minutes after the initial blast, and the Quartz Hammer reduced a Cyber Stinger to nothing but dozens of small pieces of metal and droplets of Fusion Matter.

Evan and Mark looked at the infected ruins of Malph's and remembered the stinging that Mark had felt. It had been exactly a week since that incident, and Mark couldn't really feel the wound anymore. He still didn't understand how he managed to recover (temporarily) so quickly, however.

"That was a crazy day," Mark said.

"Yeah, you have your Buttercup nano to thank for your own survival," Evan said.

"Yeah, I owe you one," Mark said. "But that was a cool move, that 360º quadruple-kill on that Fusion Spawn squad."

Evan nodded before they heard some kind of whirring noise from behind them. When they turned around, they could see someone riding towards them on some kind of super hover-cycle. Except... the strange ride seemed to be part of that person. When he stopped near the two, the ride suddenly crumpled and shrunk into his feet. When Mark got a clear look at him, he had a feeling of nostalgia. Not the good kind.

This person wore a red-and-orange striped jacket with a part-dark-blue and part-white undershirt. He had dark blue pants and shoes, and he had orange googles around his forehead. Mark immediately knew who he was, as he had met him before.

"Sup!" the teenager said, waving to Mark and Evan.

"Hey, Rex!" Evan said, even though Mark just looked away.

"What?" Evan said. "That happened years ago-"

"PLEASE DON'T REMIND ME!" Mark yelled very defensively. Rex's appearance had clearly made Mark remember something from his past that he had wanted to keep hidden from most of his friends, because he thought that if the truth went out, he'd be either hated or feared by everyone. But the defensive shout Mark had made only attracted more to whatever was happening.

"Oh..." Evan said. "Sorry about that..."

"It's fine," Mark said, sighing at the fact that he now had no choice but to tell everyone who was watching. "It happened many years ago..."

It had been a year or so since the Nanite Event, which was the destruction of an important scientific facility on the northeastern continent. That scientific facility was working on a brand of microscopic machines called nanites, which were meant to fight diseases and end starvation in some areas. It was going to be a scientific breakthrough, until one of the employees sabotaged the project by triggering the replication cycle of the nanites, causing a massive explosion.

When the nanite reactor exploded, completely destroying the facility in the process, the nanites got scattered into the atmosphere, until they descended and eventually bonded with every single living organism's molecular structure. The scientists who survived the explosion (very few did) and the abroad scientists informed the public that these nanites should be harmless. That's what everyone thought, until some of them began activating.

When nanites activate, they mutate whatever they are inhabiting into vastly different creatures known as **E**xponentially **V**ariegated **O**rganisms, or EVOs. These mutations can vary from human-like to completely unrecognizable. While EVOs are normally defeated and cured by a team of the Powerpuff Girls, Ben Tennyson and a nanite-studying research facility known as Providence, some were incurable EVOs, such as Rex. EVO attacks normally occurred once every week, most of them being cured or defeated. But many of them occur by complete surprise, and nobody can predict who will become an EVO next, and where. EVOs could suddenly appear in a busy crowd, or in prison cells. Whatever the case is, it happens.

It was a normal day in Townsville, around five years before Mark had been chosen for the time machine experiment at Dexlabs. Dexlabs had not started yet, and Ben Tennyson's identity as the alien-transforming hero had not yet been revealed. The rapid expansion of technology had not yet occurred, so normal cars sped along the roads, and Townsville's technology seemed similar to today's technology.

In the southeast corner of Townsville, there was a spaceport called Offworld Plaza. This place was Harry Emeron's former workplace, and was the main location of all space-related activities on Arkadex, and Mark sometimes took after-school classes there. At the moment, a specific rocket was taking off, designed to launch the final component to the final Space Station Orbital System (SSOS).

A much younger Mark was watching from the observation platform through his binoculars, along with his school friends, including Evan, and a bunch of scientists, including Mark's dad.

"_T-minus 1 minute," _a voice said on the loudspeakers in the ceiling.

Mark was really anticipating wanting to see the rocket launch, because he never had seen one in person before. After seeing the rocket launch, he had planned to become an astronaut, and see an alien planet for the first time. Little did Mark know that his future was not to be what he had planned, but he would see an alien planet for the first time.

"_T-minus 30 seconds..."_

So many things were rushing through Mark's mind, such as what the aliens would look like. If anything, he wanted to meet the race of one of those many aliens that were saving the world constantly from evil villains. Mark then looked over at the countdown, which was about to reach the 10-second mark. He heard the announcer say,

"T-minus_ 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..."_

Massive flames ruptured from the engines of the rocket as it began to move upward, slowly at first. Mark watched in awe as the rocket propelled upward into the sky. But this awe was short-lived as he suddenly felt this weird feeling in his eyes. He quickly looked in the reflection in the glass, and his eyes were changing color from green to pure red.

"Mark, what's going on?" a much younger Evan asked, noticing Mark's eye color changing too. But before Mark could even answer that question, he quickly fell to the floor. Many of the researchers looked over, and Mark's dad ran over to him.

"What's happening to me?!" Mark screamed as he looked over at his hands, as they were changing color... to a strange bluish-green. He then felt like he was turning into crystals, and the next thing Mark knew was that he was completely made out of crystals. Small crystal spikes then came out of his forehead. After that, all Mark could think of was...

"_KILL... DESTROY... ELIMINATE ALL!" _

The EVO Mark turned around and faced the researchers who were now running out of the room. He could hear alarms going throughout the spaceport, as he ran toward them. He aimed his crystal hand at a researcher who tripped in the chaos of the evacuation and fired a lone crystal right at him. It only took one hit.

EVO Mark raised his hand toward a nearby vault door, where his hand glowed red. At that moment, the vault door suddenly flew backward and into the other wall. Mark walked into the vault and blew up all the papers and files inside, before blowing a hole in the wall and walking outside toward the launching pad.

EVO Mark looked up toward the rocket and blasted at the floor to launch him upward, but he was suddenly intercepted by some strange streak of pink light, and he flew through the wall of the spaceport, out the other side, and into a large concrete wall. When EVO Mark recovered, he looked at his hands. Maces were now forming from them. When he saw a bright blue streak flying at him, he prepared them and sent them flying right at the blue streak, sending it flying into the spaceport.

"Bubbles, are you OK?" asked the pink streak as it flew toward Mark.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Bubbles said, flying back out of the building.

"_You..._" EVO Mark muttered angrily, blasting both Blossom and Bubbles back through the spaceport. He looked up at the smoke trail the rocket had made flying up into outer space, so EVO Mark blasted up to intercept it, and constantly blasted back to made sure any of the Powerpuff Girls weren't coming at him. He could now see the rocket going extremely fast, but after a quick barrage of rocket blasts, EVO Mark managed to grab onto the rocket. He quickly climbed up it, but not so that the rocket pilots would see him. His plan was going well, until he suddenly saw a green streak coming right at him. He prepared his shield, but somehow the green streak broke through it, and laser-blasted him into the space station ahead.

After EVO Mark landed on top of the space station, shocking many workers as it caused a big dent in the station, he could see the green streak coming at him, and it was now firing lasers at him, but they were barely doing a thing, if not just slightly burning him. When the green streak landed on the space station, causing another big dent that almost ripped open the space station, EVO Mark clearly knew who it was. Buttercup.

Buttercup sent EVO Mark flying into one of the many satellites attached to the station, causing it to fly off and burn in Arkadex's atmosphere. As this occurred, EVO Mark deflected many of Buttercup's laser vision blasts, before redirecting one at her, causing her to lose focus. Taking advantage of this opportunity, EVO Mark slammed her through the station, causing all the air and any workers inside, to be sucked out into space.

Alarms started going off inside the station, even though they were short-lived. EVO Mark landed inside the station and started firing crystals at Buttercup, which barely affected her. After managing to dodge the next few crystals from him, Buttercup flew at EVO Mark and sent him flying into the back wall of the space station, nearly breaking it.

EVO Mark quickly retaliated by using his telekinetic powers to slam Buttercup into the walls of the space station, causing even more dents. Finally, EVO Mark sent Buttercup flying throughout the final wall of the space station, before he looked to his right through one of the only remaining windows, to see that both Blossom and Bubbles were coming to Buttercup's help.

EVO Mark quickly stopped Bubbles and Blossom in mid-space (because they're in space) before throwing them at Buttercup, who was flying at him again. EVO Mark then jumped on top of the space station, and noticed that it seemed of a higher temperature than usual. He then looked at the planet Arkadex, which seemed to be getting closer every second, and that's when he came to a realization.

"_We're gonna crash into Arkadex.."_

As the space station fell toward the rapidly rotating planet, the temperature of the space station began to rise rapidly, causing some slight discomfort for EVO Mark's feet, but he didn't care. He suddenly saw all three of the Powerpuff Girls flying at him, but quickly intercepted them with his newly formed mace hands, causing all of them to fly outward into space. As Mark was watching space, he could see some kind of green dot that would normally be unseeable to the human eye. EVO Mark didn't know what it was, but he looked down to see pieces of the station that now were bright red were flinging outward away from the planet. At the same time, the space station fell downward faster and faster, like a meteorite.

EVO Mark turned around to see that the three Powerpuff Girls were coming back toward him. He fired multiple emerald lasers, but they quickly dodged. Before EVO Mark even knew it, he was getting tossed around by the Powerpuff Girls repeatedly, until he was suddenly thrown past the space station.

Now EVO Mark felt massive heat blasting against him, but it was only a slight discomfort to him, as his crystal body allowed him to withstand temperatures as hot as the surface of the Sun. EVO Mark got ready to land, until he saw that the Powerpuff Girls were going after him again, and he was suddenly pummeled by all three of them at once.

Now all four of them were falling through the atmosphere, constantly barraging attacks over and over. They fell through the stratosphere, then the clouds, then they fell through an airplane, before he could see he was about to land in a park. A park with a volcano in the center... with an observatory on top. Mojo's Volcano, no less.

Meanwhile, Mojo Jojo was working on yet another plan to destroy the Powerpuff Girls, which was basically the only thing he did, if not observing places or spying. He was currently looking at City Hall, which was many miles away, until he heard what sounded like a meteor. He looked in the direction of where it seemed to be coming from through his massive telescope and saw that it was coming straight at him. Mojo quickly bailed out before a massive explosion took up his lab.

Before Mojo Jojo could even turn around, EVO Mark and the Powerpuff Girls were already fighting in the center of his observatory, causing a gigantic hole in the floor, and the volcanic island that was once in Townsville Park had been split straight open. Mojo quickly got out his laser blaster and fired at the chaos that was going on in the lab, but it reflected from EVO Mark and ended up being sent straight at Mojo, making him fly into the wall of his observatory and knocking him unconscious.

Meanwhile, the 3-on-1 battle between EVO Mark and the Powerpuff Girls was at a stalemate because EVO Mark was barely affected and the Powerpuff Girls were also getting tired. When the Powerpuff Girls sent EVO Mark flying into the streets nearby, and the two halves of Mojo Volcano fell into Townsville Park, multiple people in armored suits began to show up.

These armored people wore mostly white armor in the chest, whereas the less armored parts were black. Their gloves and boots were white, and their helmets were mostly black, with white visor-like viewing areas, like motorcycle helmets. These people were the agents who worked for Providence.

EVO Mark started attacking those people, sending many of them flying or throwing them into walls. He was about to shred one with his claws before the Powerpuff Girls intervened again. They sent Mark flying through nearby buildings, and then upward into the sky, only to collide with another airplane above.

EVO Mark managed to hold on to the plane, causing really long scratch marks as he slid down the bottom side of the plane. After he finally couldn't hold on, he started falling toward a large tower. He was ready to land through the window he expected to crash through, but he suddenly intercepted by Bubbles, until he seemed to be the Powerpuff Girls' punching bag. After about 20 seconds, he was sent flying once again, but this time he was about to crash into... an explosive chemical trick.

After the subsequent crash and the quick rescue of the driver, Blossom fired her laser vision at EVO Mark, who was now covered in the chemicals. Milliseconds after the lasers hit EVO Mark, a massive explosion took up most of the city block. Then they flew down toward EVO Mark, but he was ready, and he attacked Blossom and Bubbles with his emerald mace hands, sending them flying into the wall. Then before Buttercup could react, he formed some kind of green bubble in his hands, and fired it at Buttercup, completely encasing her in it. When Buttercup tried to blast her way out, the bubble did not suffer a scratch.

EVO Mark sensed the other two Powerpuff Girls coming at him, so he quickly stopped them with more impenetrable bubbles. Now that all three of the Powerpuff Girls could not do anything, EVO Mark focused on the Providence Agents who were coming toward him, including Rex. EVO Mark focused on Rex, however, whose arm began to transform into a mechanical sword. EVO Mark also turned his hands into emerald swords.

"_TRAITOR!" _EVO Mark yelled as he launched himself at Rex, and they began dueling. EVO Mark had been doing really doing well blocking Rex's sword attacks, and whenever EVO Mark was hit by Rex's sword, it barely affected him. But EVO Mark was so distracted battling Rex, that he didn't even notice Providence Agents coming up with some sort of device with many wires moving around randomly, wanting to clasp onto anything.

After the Providence agents focused a laser on the machine onto EVO Mark, causing the wires then flew at EVO Mark and attached to him.

"_What is thi-" _EVO Mark tried to say before he was interrupted by electric currents beginning to circulate throughout him, before the electricity began to go back into the wire. But when the electricity that was surged onto him was gone, energy was still being sucked out of EVO Mark. This process continued for a couple minutes, until Mark could not even blast a single spark at anything. He no longer had the energy to fight anymore, so he fell down.

As Providence agents approached the still, unconscious body of EVO Mark with their laser blasters at the ready, Rex's hands began to glow blue, and he touched EVO Mark.

Within a few seconds, EVO Mark began to transform, the spikes were going back into his emerald body, his eyes were turning green again, and his body was turning to its normal form. Everything that EVO Mark fired or created immediately vanished after he turned normal. As his eyes opened, Mark looked around in confusion.

"_Who are these people? Where am I? What happened?" _Mark thought as he looked into the sky, where he could see the remains of the Space Station Orbital System burning up in the atmosphere.

When Mark got up, Mark's dad and Evan came near, but the Providence agents quickly blocked them from getting near Mark.

"Dad?" Mark asked. "What's going on? Why am I here?"

"It'll all be explained," Rex said. "First we need to get you to Providence HQ. Follow the Providence agents, kid." He pointed to a nearby airship that was landing. Mark walked into it, along with his dad, and it took off toward a gigantic white building that was miles away.

"At first, the whole EVO incident kinda caused a dent in anyone wanting to hang out with me, in case I went EVO again. But even after it did not happen for about a year, nobody but Evan really wanted to hang out with me, and that still continued until that time travel incident.

After I was cured, Providence had taken me to its headquarters to give me a serum injection that, as they said, would keep any more of my nanites from activating. It would also pass the serum to new nanites to prevent them from activating. These serums had been given to Providence by Dexlabs, and even though they had loopholes, they slowed down the frequency of EVO attacks by a factor of 3.

None of the Powerpuff Girls know that it was me who went EVO because it was Rex, the Providence Agents, my dad and Evan alone who were around when I was cured, and normally, they keep the identity of an EVO secret, for his or her safety. And even if it's revealed, the Mayor of Townsville has spoken out multiple times that the human who became an EVO is not responsible for any destruction or deaths that occurred, because it wasn't the human who did it, and I am inclined to agree with him.

Offworld Plaza was rebuilt shortly after my EVO incident, as well as the space station. Also, my dad had to quit his job at Offworld Plaza for obvious reasons. He started working at Dexlabs when it got started, after some extensive background security checks, of course.

Normally right when an EVO is cured, the person loses the memories of ever being an EVO. Over the years, however, I've managed to recollect the memory of what I did... and I've never really wanted it to get out... because I thought that I would be feared or hated if it got out. But now that this world has been so infected and damaged, I feel like it will be like nothing if I were to tell you now.

Also, one of the many things I could never explain was that green dot in the sky while I was in space. I thought it was originally Buttercup, but now... I guess we all know what it truly is."

Mark finally finished his story, as everyone who had came near to hear Mark's story, was amazed at what they had just heard. Buttercup, who had heard Mark's story via her superhearing, landed nearby.

"That was you?!" Buttercup said. "That one EVO who was a pain to defeat?"

"Look, I was out of control at the time," Mark said.

"Oh, it's cool," Buttercup said, smiling. "You were really fun to battle, unlike some of the other EVOs..."

"Thanks, I guess..." Mark said, as this the first time Mark and Buttercup were actually chatting.

"Well, whatever," Buttercup said. "I'll be down at my house now. See ya!"

A streak of green energy followed Buttercup as she flew southward, leaving tiny flames on the ground where she had taken off. Shortly after, Numbuh Two came over and said,

"Hey, Evan! Your patrol shift has ended! You and Mark can go back to Sector V.

Mark and Evan did a gesture of acceptance before walking toward the SCAMPER which had just recently landed. As Mark walked onto the SCAMPER, he turned around and, for some reason, he felt like he was being watched.

_Mandark's Laboratory_

Unknown to Mark, his story was currently being spied on by a Cyber Stinger watching from a nearby building, which was transmitting a signal to the depths of Mandark's gigantic laboratory to be listened to. A pair of Fusions were watching over the audio monitor, listening to them.

"So their so-called hero used to be an EVO?" the spiky-haired Fusion said. "Great idea telling them that, Mark..."

"Whatever..." Fusion Mandark said in a distorted voice that sounded strikingly similar to Mandark's voice. "But they seem to have completely forgotten about our plan..."

"Yeah, I really managed to get them convinced that Fusion Numbuh Two was the Fusion who did all that stuff to Numbuh 108."

"By the way, Has Lord Fuse told anyone here when we are gonna actually weaken their forces? I haven't gotten any confirmation yet.

"Lord Fuse ordered that we attack early next morning. This way, they won't even be prepared. If there are any guards, I'll have a squad of Tech Drones and Air Drones knock 'em out so fast they won't even be able to alert the Treehouse of us, and then we will capture them for my... project. I will be so rewarded for this..."

* * *

**Well, there we go! What do you think about Mark's past? And what is this "project" the Fusions are planning? Tell your speculations in form of reviews, and I will see you tomorrow with another chapter!**


	8. Big Problems

**Hey, guys! I've got this next chapter as promised! Now, I understand that it's much shorter than the others, but this chapter is mostly for story progression, and the next chapters will be much longer! Enjoy this short chapter, because the tables turn in this one!**

* * *

Mark's story of becoming an EVO had spread throughout Sector V in less than a few hours. Some KND agents, after hearing the story, thought that Mark was cooler than ever, while others were scared of him, despite the current impossibility of Mark transforming into an EVO at this moment. At the same time, the Fusion leaders had remained silent ever since the defeat of Fusion Numbuh Two, and Mark thought that was not a good sign, and that they were planning something.

It was currently very early morning, around 4:00 AM. Evan was patrolling on night guard duty, and he was keeping a lookout for any ambushing Fusion Monsters, like what happened a couple days ago, when a group of Fusion Spawns had ambushed him, but he had managed to defeat them. In order to prepare for anything, all KND agents on night guard duties had goggles that shift between night vision and heat-seeking vision. As for Mark, he was in the KND Sleeping Bunker, asleep and dreaming.

* * *

_Mark was running through a mono-chromatic maze, that was constantly changing colors. After turning a corner, pieces of wood started falling on him. He had managed to dodge all of them, but as he got farther down the hallway, it just seemed to get longer. Also, the colors in the hallway seemed to be turning green, and suddenly from what Mark could hear, alarms began going off._

* * *

Seconds later, Mark suddenly woke up and realized that those alarms were real. And from what Mark could see as he quickly jumped out of his bed, every KND agent in the room had also jolted awake from the alarm too. A voice that sounded like Computress's voice said,

"_**The Treehouse's Gravity Decelerator is being damaged! Proceed with evacuation immediately!" **_

Mark quickly ran out of the Sleeping Bunker through the crowd of KND agents. He was too panicked to check his NanoCom map at the moment, so he ran out of the crowd into a hallway that wasn't as crowded to check where Numbuh Two and Numbuh Five were (he had synched his NanoCom to Evan's, Numbuh Two's and Numbuh Five's so he would see their locations too). Numbuh Two and Numbuh Five were running to the Treehouse Monitor Room. As for Evan... he was not even there.

Mark decided to run toward Numbuh Two and Numbuh Five's position, and after jumping across platforms, running through hallways and rooms, and going through the brig of a boat, he finally made it into the Treehouse Monitor Room, where Numbuh Two and Numbuh Five were looking over hundreds of monitors surrounding the room in a cylinder.

"What is going on?!" Mark shouted as he looked at the security camera monitors, but most of the camera views were static.

"Numbuh Five, is there anything on the working monitors?" Numbuh Two said. Numbuh Five could only see a couple monitors that actually worked. One of them was the Chain 2 camera monitor. Numbuh Five saw, on the monitor, many Fusion Spawns and mechanical Fusion insects, moving to the left of the camera, toward the Gravity Decelerator. Past them, Mark could see many KND agents being dragged away by these Fusion insects.

On the other working monitors, Mark could see these things:

Chain 1 Camera Monitor: The monsters were heading downward toward the Gravity Decelator. Soon after Mark looked at it, it went static after one of the Fusion spiders launched at it.

Gravity Decelerator Monitor: It was an overhead view of the Gravity Decelerator. Monsters were around and all over it, attacking and chipping pieces off of it.

With an expression of shock, Mark screamed, "They're attacking the Gravity Decelerator! This place is going to collapse!"

In response, Numbuh Two yelled, "_**QUICK! WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE**_!"

All three of them quickly bailed for the exit door as the Treehouse began to shake. Dust fell from the ceiling and even parts of the ceiling began to fall. As Mark ran through the exit door and into the hallways, he looked out a window on his left and saw an entire room fall from the sky. Mark swore he even saw some KND operatives in that room, floating in panic as they fell to their imminent demise.

Not long after Numbuh Two and Numbuh Five entered the Main Briefing Room of the Treehouse, a massive chunk of 2x4s suddenly fell through the roof, crushing nearby KND agents. Right when the three were about to reach the exit staircase, the stair-pieces collapsed, leaving them trapped.

"Oh great..." Mark said, jumping onto one of the window-sills and carefully going through the hole in the glass window. After he jumped onto a nearby window ledge, the KND Treehouse had begun tilting upwards and its front began facing the sky at a 35º angle.

Thinking of no other option, he was going to press his NanoCom to call Buttercup, but before he could even place his finger on the "CALL" button, Mark could already see Buttercup rescuing agents who were either trapped or falling. Mark was about to call her name out, but suddenly the entire land the Treehouse stood on started falling, which Mark quickly assumed to be the result of the Gravity Decelerator having shut down completely.

After Mark seemed to be floating in the air for only 1 or 2 seconds, he suddenly was thrown downward and through the ledge he was standing on. He found himself falling, and Buttercup was too busy rescuing others. He called out Buttercup's name, and she must have managed to hear him, because she quickly flew down to save him. Right when Mark was millimeters from the ground, he was swiped to a green streak of light, and before Mark could even process what just happened, he was on the ground of Sector V.

When Mark got up and looked toward the Treehouse, it was clear that the tree had not fallen over, but Mark could see the roots were pulled a bit out of the ground. The piece of land the KND Treehouse stood on had fallen and crushed the Gravity Decelerator. The chains were lining the ground, and blue smoke was coming from the remains of the Gravity Decelerator. KND operatives everywhere were scrambling around for any salvageable items inside, and many of them were carrying injured operatives to medical tents being set up in Hero Square.

"Mark, are you OK?" Numbuh Two said, just landing on the ground after Buttercup dropped him off. Numbuh Five appeared shortly after.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Mark said, brushing dust off of his shirt. "What were those mechanical Fusion spider things?"

"Oh, those were Tech normally reside in Genius Grove."

When Mark heard a humming sound behind him, he looked around to see Computress hovering toward them.

"Computress!" Numbuh Two said. "What's the casualty toll?"

Computress said. "At this moment, the amount of injured is 421, the amount of missing is staying at 25, and the number of dead is 83."

"Uh-oh," Numbuh Two said, with an expression of fear on his face.

"What?" Mark asked.

"Evan was on night-guard duty right when they attacked."

"WHAT?!" Mark screamed, fearing the worst. "Where is he on the casualty status board?"

Computress drew in her virtual clipboard, and said, "Evan Starrius, or Numbuh 868, is in the "MISSING" section."

Mark lost all sense of reality. His best friend was now, missing! Mark didn't know whether or not he was either captured, taken to be killed off somewhere else, or both. That's when something flashed in Mark's mind. Mark checked his NanoCom map for Evan's signature, and he couldn't find him in Sector V, so he widened the map to show all of the the western side of the land. Evan was now apparently in... Genius Grove?

"My NanoCom is saying that Evan is in... Genius Grove?"

Numbuh Two remained silent for a second, and said, "That must mean that whatever Fusion who did this must have captured all the guards and brought them to Genius Grove!"

"Well then, we need to plan out an attack against them!"

"Not yet."

"WHA- Why not?"

"That's exactly what they're gonna be expecting..."

"Well, what are we gonna do?"

"We need to recover first!"

"That's not going to work! Don't you see? THAT is what they're going to be expecting! And while we're recovering, they're just gonna attack us a second time! We have to get them before they get us again! It's the only way!"

Numbuh Two stood, a bit befuddled at Mark. After an awkward pause, he finally spoke, "All right, we'll attack Genius Grove tomorrow, but you better be ready, because the monsters down there are much more powerful and much more intelligent than every other Fusion Monster you've encountered so far."

"I'm sure I'll do fine," Mark responded. "I've been through a lot."

* * *

It was sunset, and Numbuh Two, Numbuh Five and Mark were in the Mission Prep Room. They were looking over a map, planning a retaliation and strategizing their movements to fool the Fusions.

Numbuh Two said, "We'll pass Genius Grove and move slightly to the east to make them think that we're heading to Candy Cove over here, and once we're out of view of them, we'll dive under their radar sense and below the chasms of land, activate our 'invisibility sense', and come back and land in Genius Grove."

"That's a good idea, they'll think we'll be over here," Mark said, pointing on the eastern section of the map, which had two large chunks of land and a massive ravine of Fusion Matter separating the two. There was also one small bit of land in the far northeast section of the map.

"By the way, that is that?" Mark said, putting his pointer finger on that part of the map.

"Oh, that's the remains of Mount Blackhead," Numbuh Five said. "That's a dead zone, I wouldn't advise going there."

"Got it," Mark said. "But I think in order to fool them even better, we should have an extra SCAMPER hidden under our cloaking devices, and when we dive under, that SCAMPER will uncloak and we'll cloak up, and that SCAMPER will land in Candy Cove. That way, they will think that we're actually in Candy Cove! Also, we should have a signal broadcast to Malph's which should be purposely intercepted by the Fusions. They should say that a scout team is heading to Candy Cove to spy on Genius Grove. The Fusions will intercept that, and-"

"They'll send their forces after them, leaving them undefended! Brilliant, Mark!" Numbuh Two finished Mark's sentence. "Well, aside from the fact that the scouts gonna be in trouble. We'll send a strong scout team led by Numbuh 25."

"Got to ask," Mark asked. "Also, how much precautions are we going to taking?"

Numbuh Two said, "We'll be using thermal concealment, so they won't get anything on their infrared/thermal sensors. The cloak will block any sound of, for instance: The SCAMPER engines, our voices, and our radio signals will be in a special complex code which is not known to Fusions, which can easily be decoded in Sector V."

"Good idea!" Mark said. "Should we send out the signal and also send it slightly toward Genius Grove's location?"

"Yeah, we'll be broadcasting to all of Pokey Oaks, hitting Mandark's lab in the process, but we'll send the first part in the secret code to say that this is meant to be a false broadcast to trick the Fusions."

"All right," Mark said. "So what exact time of the day is... (he tried to think of an operation name) Operation R.E.T.A.L.I.A.T.E (Radical Extermination To A Lot In A Technological Ease) going to kick into action?"

"From our hidden cameras, the number of patrolling Fusions is half as big during day as they would be during night. So we'll begin our attack there. Of course, their forces will likely be diminished further since they'll likely try to intercept the scout team."

"Got it. Who will be in our attack squad?"

"You, obviously, Numbuh Five, me, Numbuh 108 because she'll want revenge, Evan if he manages to recover in time, and the best members of the greatest special ops team in Sector V."

"Alright, and the initial plan after that?"

"Well, right when we land, we will find a way to get into Dexlabs with the help of Mandark, and when we do, we're going to get into Mandark Industries using the tunnels that Mandark Industries used to tunnel into Dexlabs. There probably will be Fusion Monsters inside Dexlabs, however."

"Well, I'm ready..."

_**The next day...**_

The sky was green and bright, and Mark, Numbuh Two, Numbuh Five, Numbuh 108 and the special ops team were already heading to the last couple of remaining SCAMPERs, which had been brought to Hero Square.

"You know the drill?" Numbuh Two asked Mark.

"Yep," Mark said as he prepared his Surge Cannon for inevitably destroying the Fusions. As he was about to walk on the SCAMPER, he looked out at Planet Fusion, and felt a sense of anger toward whatever Fusion had done this plan. So, they got onto their assigned SCAMPER, while the second team got into the other. As they flew out toward Pokey Oaks, the SCAMPER that Mark was not in began to turn invisible.

Minutes later, Mark could see Genius Grove and Mandark's lab on the far edge of the horizon to the east, but he only saw it for around 10 seconds before their SCAMPER and the other SCAMPER (Mark didn't even know where it was now) dived into the chasm to the east of the Pokey Oaks.

"OK, other team, prepare to un-cloak," Numbuh Two said. "Mark, you might feel cold for a second. The temperature of the inside of the SCAMPER is about to become the temperature of the outside air."

As Mark felt the cold blasting against him, he watched the other SCAMPER suddenly appear out of nowhere and head to the east. Even though the SCAMPER didn't seem to change at all from Mark's perspective, he assumed that the outside must have turned invisible.

As the invisible SCAMPER dived out of the chasm, over Pokey Oaks and toward Genius Grove, Mark could see the size of the massive lab more than ever. As the SCAMPER landed at a non-functional small fountain area that observed the large ocean of Fusion Matter, the special ops team, led by Numbuh Five, snuck ahead to scope out the area.

As Numbuh 108 and Mark got out of the SCAMPER, wearing special ops armor, she asked, "You ready?"

"Do you even need to ask?"

* * *

**Well, there we go! Yes, I know it was pretty short, but the next chapters will be much longer than before. The next chapter should be posted around Thursday, and the one after that will probably be the Thursday after that, give or take a day. See ya then!**


	9. Entering the Lab

**Hey, guys! Yes, I know, this chapter was a day late, but how about this? If a chapter is a day or so late, it's because something got in the way of my writing progress. Well, whatever. Enjoy the chapter anyway!**

* * *

As Mark, Evan, the special ops team, and Numbuh Five snuck toward the towering laboratory that was once Mandark Industries, Mark was ready to destroy every Fusion monster he could find. As they snuck through the infected park behind Dexter's old house, they attempted to avoid as much detection as possible from any Fusion creatures, and if they were spotted by something, they had a Silencing Mode added to all their blasts.

Soon, they reached a small house that was slightly bigger than all the other houses they could see. There was a giant energy-containing sphere in the back, attaching from a pipe in the ceiling into the metal in front of the lab.

Mark and the others checked for any hidden cameras. When they found nothing, they snuck to the front door of Dexlabs and looked around. When Numbuh Five put her her hand on the front door, an energy wave reverberated around the outside of the house, mostly around the area where she placed her hand.

"There seems to be force-fields going around the entire house," Numbuh Five said. "The entrances are all blocked off, and the material of the house is a pure diamond-hard metal called Dextronium, discovered by Dexter. I'm sure these defenses are not meant to be here, because if Dexter wanted us to get the materials necessary to rebuild the time machine, he would have given us a way in."

"But is there any way in?"

"Not that we know of yet. We might need to call in Rex for this operation."

"Got it," Mark said as he quickly selected Rex in his Nano-Com and called him to come to Genius Grove. After a few minutes, Mark could see smoke over the horizon. Not long after, he could see Rex flying toward them, with a mechanical duo-engine jetpack attached to his back. As he swiftly landed on the ground, the engines retreated into his back.

"Sup, guys! What is it you need me for?" Rex asked. "Does it have to do with the whole revenge stuff? Numbuh Two told me about that just before you called me."

"Yeah," Numbuh Five said. "Is it possible to hijack the house to shut down the shields?"

"Let me see..." Rex said, putting his hands on the house's front door. As blue electricity surged through his hands and into the house, it didn't do anything, but it sent pulses surrounding the metallic house.

"The shields are guarding the house," Rex said. "I can't get us in if the shields are up."

"Well, you tried," Numbuh Five said. "If we get the shields down, somehow, we'll call you to open the house."

"Got it," Rex said as he put his orange goggles over his eyes, and the duo-engine jetpack suddenly came out of his back. Smoke blasted out of the engines as he rose ino the air, and he flew northeast toward the horizon, and then he vanished.

"Well then, what do we do?" Mark said, a few seconds after Rex had vanished.

"I guess we gotta come up with different ideas until we can get in," Numbuh Five said.

* * *

The squads attempted to come up with different ideas over days, each attempt being unsuccessful. It wasn't until the last day of February when Mark came up with a sudden idea, as they were standing in front of the lab again. Mark could see one camera, attached to a tree, looking away from the house. As Mark followed the wire that was going away from the camera, it went across the road, into the ground, and then outside the ground of Mandark's lab. From there went another wire that went to what looked like a deactivated hinge, which looked they would split the sealed ceiling of Dexter's lab in half and then retract the pieces.

As an idea suddenly popped up in Mark's head, he said, "I think I know why our attempts to open the lab are not working so far!"

"Why is that?" Evan said.

"That camera!" Mark responded, pointing where he saw the camera. "The wires are connecting to that hinge there! I think that we can get in somehow!"

"What do you mean?" Numbuh Five said, walking over to them.

"OK, I know this sounds stupid, but I think if we annoy whatever is in front of the cameras long enough, the vault door may open, and, even though a flood of Fusion Monsters will likely come out, we might be able to get inside!"

Numbuh Five stood there with a facial expression of confusion. "What kind of plan is-"

"I know, but how else are we supposed to get in?"

One KND agent said, "Well, we could set up Warp Gates outside and inside the zone."

"How about I say this?" Mark said, pointing to the lab beyond the force fields. "That's Mandark's lab, now controlled by Fusions. Need I say more?"

"Actually, it might work if we're fast enough," Evan said.

"Which plan are you referring to?" Mark asked. "Mine or his?"

"Yours, and I thought of a better version! If we go to multiple cameras, they'll be all:

'What are they doing? Send out squads!'

And then, when they need to momentarily shut down shields to get their squads out, Rex can appear and manipulate the shield generator, since he has the ability to hack technology, and leave it impossible for the Fusions to control the shields, leaving the house easy to get in, and when we are all inside, Rex can turn on the shields again, and the Fusions won't be able to shut it down!"

As the team agreed, Rex flew toward the squads. When he landed, he said, "Alright, so what's the plan now? The exact same thing?"

"No," Numbuh Five said. "We're doing something else, although it will require... being seen."

"Well, then," Rex said, slightly hesitating. "How's it going to work?"

"We annoy the cameras, they shut down shields and release massive amounts of monsters, we get in and seal the house shut," Mark said, quickly summarizing the entire plan.

"OK..." Rex said, walking to a small wire complex outside the infected zone. After hacking it up, every camera's view was suddenly directed toward them. Right when they saw cameras looking at them, everyone started doing funny faces and strange acts toward the camera. As they were doing this, Mark could imagine the looks of the Fusions' faces pretty well.

Only a few minutes after they had started their plan, they heard a noise that sounded like something shutting down, followed the metallic noises of a huge door splitting. When Mark, he not only saw the door splitting apart, but a wave of glowing red eyes behind a wall of moving blue climbing out of the opening between them as well. At the sight of this, Mark swiftly brought out his Buttercup nano.

"Hold them off!" Mark said as he ran to the front of the house, with his Numbuh Two nano out to add speed to his running. As he heard lasers being blasted, mechanical shrieks and what sounded like strong wind blasts behind the house, Rex put his hands on the door. After a surge of electricity surrounded the house, the door quickly opened, and the squad rushed into the door, before Rex quickly closed it onto the first squad of Tech Drones. He then activated the shields, but changed the input so that it would not respond to anything, so it could not shut down.

"Well, now we're in!" Mark said. "Now we need to find the entrance to Dexter's lab."

The house's inside was very much like a normal suburban house, except the power was deactivated. Mark could see Fusion Matter was slightly leaking through pipes on the ceiling or through the walls. They walked into the living room, where the high-tech television was playing static, somewhat lighting up the room, sometimes flickering to KND emergency channels. The coffee table was in splinters on the floor, as if something powerful had stepped on it.

"Let me turn on the power," Rex said as he put his hands on what looked like a light switch. After Rex's arms glowed a bright electric blue, the lights were all on, illuminating the room.

Mark called back his Buttercup nano, despite the complaining he heard as the energy flew into the NanoCom, since now that they were in the house, and the Fusions could not get in, there was no need to continue holding them off for now.

As they walked around the rooms, Mark looked out impenetrable windows to see that Tech Drones were surrounding the house, trying to get in, but failing. When Mark looked down the main hallway, he could see a door at the end. The door had multiple stickers, which were all saying for others to keep out, with multiple signs claiming that Dee Dee must not enter. Mark knew this had to be the room the lab entrance was located in, but at the same time, Mark wondered whether or not Dee Dee was even alive.

"That is definitely the door," Mark said as he opened the door. Inside, it looked a lot like a normal room, except it was very messy. From what Mark could see, the only thing that wasn't messed up was a small circular red bit of carpet around the orange, stained, infected carpet. Mark stepped on it, and suddenly he was being lowered through a glass tube, getting a view at the original Dexlabs. It was definitely taller than before, and inventions, like before, lined the walls. After he landed on the pad at the end of the tube, Numbuh Five, Evan and the special ops team followed.

"Now we need to find those tunnels that were dug into Dexlabs many months ago," Numbuh Five said as they walked throughout the towering hallways. "According to this map, they should be right... here!"

As they looked up, they saw a gigantic computer screen, but there was a massive hole in it. A small Fusion Matter channel were running through the hole, making that portion of the lab 2 inches deep in Fusion Matter. Thankfully, the special ops armor they were wearing was not affected by Fusion Matter, unlike most metals. After the special ops team activated a special staircase going from the lab floor to the holes, they walked up the staircase and into the biggest tunnel leading from Dexlabs to Mandark Industries.

As they walked through the dirt and rock tunnel, they could hear metallic shrieks and metallic clanks. After the squad made it into the basement of Mandark Industries, they could see a bunch of red-and-black lined hallways going to many different locations. Mark activated his NanoCom map, and turned it to 3-D. The lab was so big that Mark's "1 in to 200 ft" scale could not fit even 1/6th of the lab, but from what Mark could see, they were only in one tunnel hub, in only a portion of the lab's basement. The middle hallway would lead to the lobby. The only problem was: Mark could see a lot of Fusion signatures in the lobby, which Mark presumed to be Tech Drones. The left hallway, however, went straight to the 3rd floor above, and there was multiple hallways branching toward the western side of the laboratory.

"That hallway," Mark said, pointing to the left hallway. As the team snuck through up the stairway, they eventually got to a balcony to the right of a bunch of hallways. They didn't walk onto it, because they would be detected if they did so. When Mark quickly peered around the wall, he could see another balcony. He looked to the squad and said,

"We need a distraction."

"Here," Numbuh 108 said as she handed Mark a grenade. After Mark pulled the pin and threw it into the crowd of Tech Drones below without looking, he heard a massive explosion, and the shrieks of the Tech Drones nearly broke Mark's eardrums.

"RUN!" Mark said as they ran across the bridge over the panicking Fusions below. Soon after, to his dismay, Mark could see many Tech Drones coming out of the hallway they were gonna go through. As he quickly came through a decision, Mark ran down a bridge extension not far in front of them, quickly urging the team to go the direction that Mark was running.

When Mark and Numbuh 108 ran into the hallway doors, Mark saw that the others were getting overpowered. He blasted the Tech Drones around the squad with his Surge Cannon, but it took at least four blasts to take them down. The upside was, the electric ball that fired out of the Surge Cannon split into five electrical spheres of the same size.

After Mark managed to clear a path for the other squad members to get through, he suddenly noticed that the door was suddenly closing in. He tried to urge them to get through. But just as Rex was about to get to the door, the metallic barrier quickly closed in between them. After it closed, Mark could barely hear the shrieks of the Tech Drones.

"Uh oh," Mark heard Numbuh 108 say behind him. He turned around, and saw that at the end of the hallways, at least six Tech Drones were coming at them. As they went down the hallway, the Tech Drones sprouted wings and began rising into the air, and the very back of their sternums began to sprout very sharp stingers.

Mark blasted as much as he could, until one of the these drones came close to Mark. He quickly got out his Quartz Hammer and slammed it in the Air Drone's face multiple times, before it fell to the ground with dents in it. He was not going to let what happened at Malph's happen to him again, or to anyone else.

"Come on!" Mark said, as he and Numbuh 108 down the hallway. Mark did not know where to go, so he ran randomly throughout the facility to try to find a way back to the lobby to save the others, but from what he could see as he ran around the hallways, all the entrances to the lobby were closed off.

"What did those Tech Drones do?" Mark asked, when he saw dozens of Tech Drones and those flying Tech Drones coming down the hallway behind them.

"Oh, those are Air Drones, modified versions of Tech Drones," Numbuh 108 said, as they ran through the extending hallways. When they could see a bunch of Tech Drones and Air Drones coming down the hallway in the front of them, they looked to their left and say a massive door saying, "**SPECIAL PROJECT CRYO-SLEEP VAULT**". When Mark attempted to enter, however, a number-coded password guard. The password system had number buttons ranging from 0 to 9.

While Mark fended off approaching Air Drones and Tech Drones, Numbuh 108 got out a special type of decoding gizmo and placed it on the password system. Seconds later, after some whirring sounds and some sparks, the screen on the decoder said,

"_**Password = 1001230218050111051819."**_

"That's a long password..." Numbuh 108 muttered as she inputed the password, paying close attention to the numbers as she pressed the buttons. Once she finished inputting the password, the two quickly rushed into the door, and closed it on the Fusion forces approaching them.

"Where do you get all that stuff?" Mark asked.

"It's the basic set of special ops gear," Numbuh 108 responded as they finally began looking around the vault they entered. The dark, narrow cul-de-sac-shaped room had pods lining the walls. From what Mark could see, there were many. Inside these pods were KND agents, which seem to be partially covered in Fusion Matter. On closer inspection, the agents looked like half-Fusion KND agents. Their faces were somewhat covered in Fusion Matter, and their red eyes glowed through their closed eyelids.

When Mark saw Evan in one of the cryogenic pods, he stared in awe as the left side of his face had a gaping scar, which was covered in Fusion Matter. Like the others, his remaining eye's eyelid have a remaining glow behind it. But in the pod right to next to Evan's, Mark saw someone who was not like the others.

In the center of the cryogenic containment cells sat a strikingly familiar girl. Her blonde hair was in pigtails, but now it was disheveled. Her pink dress was dirty, and had Fusion Matter stains on it. She was not infected or anything, however. Immediately when Mark saw her, he knew that the girl in the containment cell was Dee Dee, the girl who sent her to this future!

"Numbuh 108, I know that girl!" Mark said as he turned for the control panel in the center of the room.

"Who?" Numbuh 108 asked as she looked around before she saw Dee Dee. "Oh, her!"

Mark pressed the button that said, "RELEASE POD 13" on the control panel, and as it opened, Dee Dee slowly slid to the floor. When her eyes opened and saw Mark, she gasped loudly and scrambled to the other side of the room, trembling. Mark was somewhat surprised at this behavior.

"Hello?" Mark asked, but Dee Dee did not respond. After a long pause, Dee Dee turned her tearful eyes to Mark and spoke, her voice trembling with fear,

"I'm... I'm... I'm so... I'm so sorry... I can't handle my curiosity," Dee Dee said, sobbing more.

Mark understood what Dee Dee meant. She was sorry that she had caused that time travel incident which sent Mark to the future. But Dee Dee hadn't seen Mark in the time machine, so how did she know he was the one she had sent too far into the future?

"Excuse me, how do you know I was the-"

Before Mark could even finish his question, Dee Dee said, "A few months after... that, when the Fusion invasion started, your dad forced me into this big, long, angry talk about what I had done. He showed me pictures of you... of what he might have lost. It... terrified me... What I had done... He really left a mark on me... and I've never even stepped foot in Dexter's lab since. I'm... so... sorry..."

"It's okay, apology is totally accepted," Mark said. Right after Mark said that, Dee Dee stopped crying, froze momentarily, smiled, and then she got up, ran at him, and hugged him so tightly that he could barely breathe.

"THANK YOU! THANK YOU SO MUCH!" Dee Dee said. "I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD GET OUT OF HERE!"

That's when Dee Dee paused momentarily, let go of Mark and said, "Uh... how long have I been here?"

"Well, it's February 28th today," Mark said, trying to help Dee Dee with her current "dilemma". At the same time, he was breathing hard to gain oxygen after being squeezed for at least 10 seconds.

"OMG!" Dee Dee said, collapsing on the floor. "That means I've been here for at least 2 MONTHS!"

Shocked at how long Dee Dee was imprisoned, he wondered why her name hadn't come up before. After he helped her back up, he heard what sounded like distorted laughter.

"What fools you are..." an unfamiliar, distorted voice said, before all the pod release buttons on the control panel suddenly moved down into their sockets, as if an invisible being had just pushed the buttons. Not long after, all the pods in the room opened, and the half-Fusion KND agents slid onto the floor, with a small Fusion Matter trail behind them. As they slowly got up, they looked at Mark, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee with their glowing red eyes.

Mark quickly got out his Surge Cannon and blasted at one of them, making him fall unconscious. This was followed by the distorted voice saying, "Yeah... they're still in their early stage, which makes them somewhat as weak as a puny human. However, I will give you a chance... Go down that lift."

After the distorted voice spoke, the half-Fusions stopped and stared at them, as a panel opened in the walls behind Mark, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee. After a bit of hesitation, the three walked through the door. After going down a long black-and-red lift, they entered a gigantic chamber, which had vines of Fusion Matter draping from the ceiling. When they entered the chamber, they saw that this chamber was a gigantic maze.

"Yeah..." the unfamiliar-sounding Fusion said. "You're just gonna be going in there for my pure amusement. If you're good enough, I _might _release your friends."

"Great, now we're basically their entertainment," Mark muttered as they walked into the maze, wondering how they could possibly escape the Fusions now. What he knew now was that in order to escape, they would have to defy all odds.

* * *

**Uh-oh! What are Mark, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee going to do? Well, we'll find out in the next chapter, which, sadly, will have to be delayed a few days, because of special stuff that I have to do first. The tenth chapter should likely be released around the weekend after this one. See you guys then!**


	10. Lab Rats

**Oh wow, I honestly didn't know if I'd be able to upload this in time or not! But whatever: Hey guys! I'm still in the middle of a big project, but I've been able to make this chapter during breaks and I uploaded this in one of my breaks right now. This one is extra long as a treat for you guys, and to make up for two really short chapters. Will Mark, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee ever escape the maze? Let's find out!**

* * *

Numbuh 108, Dee Dee and Mark had been in the Fusion maze for only a few minutes, and they were already hopelessly lost. After the group took another left, not really sure where to go, they sat down and wondered whether or not they were ever going to find the exit.

As Mark sat down, he was now looking at his NanoCom. He pressed a special button he had found days ago, called "FAILSAFE COMMUNICATION". He then pressed "CALL" on the functions menu, and a list popped up. He highlighted Buttercup and all of the KND, then pressed "CONTINUE." When a menu asking how the failsafe would be triggered appeared, he typed "WHEN NANO-COM IS REMOVED WITHOUT OWNER'S APPROVAL". He then pressed the "FINISH" button, and then he took his eyes off the NanoCom, and turned back to Dee Dee, who was sitting next to him, and Numbuh 108, who were looking ahead into the maze.

"What you doing?" Dee Dee asked curiously, looking at Mark's NanoCom.

"Just setting up something," Mark said.

"HOW ARE WE GONNA GET OUT OF HERE?!" Numbuh 108 screamed, followed by a distorted giggle from the Fusion. It was obvious that she was already losing her mind, likely from the claustrophobia. "WHERE THE HECK DO WE GO?!"

As another metaphorical light bulb went off in Mark's mind, he activated the 3-D map on his NanoCom, which showed the entire maze. He then pressed a button on his NanoCom, and lines of code took up the place. Not long after, a yellow line zoomed throughout the pathways, from where Mark, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee were to the exit of the maze.

"For now, we go straight, then take a left, then take the second right to.. Atrium 17."

For the next half-hour, Mark, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee went through the maze, guided by Mark's NanoCom map. Eventually, the Fusion began to grow tired of their easiness of going through the maze, so he began pressing multiple buttons in his observation room, trying to find a way to get them lost again.

When Mark, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee entered "Maze Atrium 12", the room was a gigantic dome, which artificial light shining into the oculus in the ceiling. All of the atriums tended to have a different theme. The atriums they had been in before (Atriums 18 and 17) had themes of grassland and rocks. This atrium, obviously, had the theme of old temples.

When Mark and the others looked around, Mark looked at his NanoCom's map again, and he saw many Fusion signatures going throughout the maze now. When Mark clicked on one, he saw a picture of what looked like a rougher-edged Tech Drone with much sharper claws. He also got the description:

"_**MONSTER DESCRIPTION #E31"**_

_**Name: Tech Queen**_

_**Type: **__**Adaptium**_

_**The Tech Queen is a highly upgraded version of the Tech Drone. They were a near-perfect experiment of Dexter's, but all of them were stolen and infected by the Fusions. They are now the strongest members of the Fusion forces in Genius Grove, and tend to be high-ranking. Their organized heat-seeking vision allows them to see specific organisms while blocking off any heat from other types of organisms. Their four sets of duo-claws are sharp enough to slice a thin sheet of Dextronium in half."**_

Mark prepared his Surge Cannon as he heard the shrieks of the Tech Queens getting louder and louder. When they came around the corner, Mark blasted as rapidly as he could, but the Tech Queens got closer and closer. When they got a few feet from Mark, he got his Quartz Hammer out, and since he had weakened them with his Surge Cannon, it only took out one hit to bring their robotic insect heads to pieces of metal and Fusion Matter.

When Mark saw more Tech Queens coming at them, he prepared his Surge Cannon again, and blasted over and over again until all of the others were defeated. He turned around and saw that Dee Dee was cowering in a corner, terrified. All the Tech Queens paid more attention to Mark and Numbuh 108, however. Numbuh 108, however, was fending off a Tech Queen with his T.H.U.M.P.E.R, as more came toward Numbuh 108. Mark threw his Quartz Hammer at one of the Tech Queen's heads, while he overloaded another with his Surge Cannon.

A few minutes later, all of the Tech Queens were defeated. As Mark pulled his Quartz Hammer out of a dead Tech Queen, the Fusion Matter leaked out and turned into a Fusion Spawn, which fled into one of the maze pathways.

"I think that's all of them," Mark said, kicking a Tech Queen's head out of his path. "We might want to get going before more appear. But first, is anyone hurt?"

"I don't think so," Numbuh 108 said. "What about you, Dee Dee?"

"No..." Dee Dee said, trembling slightly. "Let's get out of here."

As the three walked through the towering maze, they continued using Mark's NanoCom as a guide to the exit. After about 15 more minutes of walking through the maze, the three heard sudden clanks and rumbles. When Mark looked at the NanoCom to see what was going on, he saw that the entire maze was changing shape from square to circle. The central parts were rising up like a circular pyramid, and the exit had suddenly moved to the very middle-top.

The ceiling began opening, revealing the green sky, before Mark heard a splash, so the top must have fallen into the ocean. This was confirmed when a giant wave of Fusion Matter fell into the maze. Thankfully, the three were not in the splash radius of the waves, since the maze transformation pushed them away. Mark sighed as he searched for a new path from where they were to the exit, and when he looked up, Dee Dee and Numbuh 108 were backing against the walls in fear.

"OK, I think the maze has stopped changing," Mark said. "Now we have to go... left."

For the next hour or so, Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee followed Mark through the completely changed maze. After going through countless passages, staircases and atriums, they finally reached the very middle and the very top.

"WE DID IT!" Numbuh 108 said, as they reached the top.

"Yeah..." Mark said, as he took a second to overlook the entire maze, which was at least 2 miles wide in radius. He also looked at the green sky, and Planet Fusion hanging above.

Mark then looked at the button in the middle of the end platform, labeled "POSSIBLE FREEDOM FOR YOUR FRIENDS" stood. Mark cringed at the joke the Fusion was making, and he pressed the button.

The distorted Fusion's laugh echoed throughout the room, before he spoke in a very loud voice, **"**_**Ha! You only made it through Stage 1 of infinity! Prepare for Stage 2: FUSION OVERLOAD ARENA!"**_

The platforms began to lower, and the maze walls began to lower. Fearing of falling off, everyone crowded around the button, but not long after, the button went into the platform, so everyone fell over. After the platform lowered to the bottom of what looked like an arena now, Mark asked, rather annoyed, "What now?"

"_Well..._" the Fusion said. "_I've had it with you anyway... Let me extract you though... For Fusion Mandark's sake..."_

A robotic hand suddenly came out of the floor and tried to pull Dee Dee away. Mark, however, quickly ran for the main hinge and attacked it with his Quartz Hammer multiple times, and it eventually blew up. As Dee Dee fell to the ground, Mark quickly pried Dee Dee out of the severed robotic hand's grasp. Mark did the same thing again when other of the robotic hands appeared.

"_**FINE!" **_the Fusion yelled. _**"DIE WITH THEM, THEN! A FUSION'S BEEN MADE OF YOU ALREADY!"**_

After Mark pulled Dee Dee up, he looked up and saw hundreds upon thousands of Fusion Spawns, Air Drones and Tech Drones were coming down into the arena toward them, followed by a wave of Fusion Matter. At the moment he saw this, he was worried for his life, and really wanted to find a way to get out. If only he could teleport...

"_Wait... teleport! MY NUMBUH TWO NANO HAS A TELEPORTATION POWER!" _

He quickly brought his Numbuh Two nano, which he, admittedly, only used for his training exercises. He didn't care about that, however.

"GUYS!" Mark shouted over all the shrieks and screams of the Fusion forces closing in on them. "We can teleport out using my Numbuh Two nano! Hold my hands!"

Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee did so, and blue energy rings began to fly and pulse around the three. After a flash of blue light, Mark teleported into a dark room, and he felt incredibly dizzy. He assumed it was a short-term side effect of teleportation, like at the Warp Gate. He saw Numbuh 108 and Dee Dee suddenly appear beside him as he tried to look around.

When Mark finally came back to his senses, he realized they were not inside the hallways around the lobby, but in the center of maze, but they were in a gigantic room, with monitors surrounding a wall to this left. When he looked around further, he saw there were multiple glowing red energy spheres attached to the walls. These containment shields contained Numbuh Five, Rex, and the special ops team. They were all just sitting there, hopeless. Even the scout team that was sent as a distraction every day was also captured. When they noticed them appear out of nowhere, many of them looked incredibly surprised.

"There they are!" Mark heard a distorted, yet normal, voice, say. As Mark turned to face whoever had spoken, he could see three Fusions and all the half-Fusions looking at them. Evan was pointing at him, with a devilish half-Fusion smile. The center pure Fusion looked like Fusion Mandark, whose attire was completely black except for his red shirt. The one of the right of Fusion Mandark was what looked like a Fusion Dee Dee, whose pink dress was now red. The one on the right looked like a short Fusion with what looked like three short, narrow spikes coming out of his head.

"Ha," Fusion Mandark said, smiling to himself. "How ironic. Imprison them in the containment fields!"

The Half-Fusions marched toward the three, which were now attempting to flee. As he ran, Mark was blasting at the approaching half-Fusions, causing them to fall. But as Mark and the others were about to reach the exit, gigantic Tech Drones suddenly came out of the ceiling and surrounded them. Since they were outnumbered, and the fact that these Tech Drones were massive, Mark had no choice but to surrender to the Fusions.

Fusion Mandark walked toward Mark and the others, smiling evilly. He confiscated Numbuh 108's and Mark's weapons, and removed their NanoComs. Mark smiled at this, since he knew that Buttercup and all of the KND had just been messaged about the fact they were captured. Mark understood it would take around 20 minutes for the KND forces to get there.

"_What are you smiling about?!_" Fusion Mandark said, walking back to his control room throne. The Half-Fusions then led them toward three containment fields, which began to fade into view. Each of them had a hole in them so that they could walk in. As Mark walked in, he heard the hole in the containment field close. When he turned around, the hole in the containment field shut.

When he walked in, he saw that the Fusions were taking their weapons and putting them in an incinerator. After about 15 minutes, Fusion Mandark spoke,"You know, I'm sick of these prisoners covering my wall. They're all fools, basically. **TAKE THEM TO THE EXECUTION CHAMBER!**"

"**WAIT!**" Mark screamed, catching the attention of the Fusions and the Half-Fusion KND agents.

"What are you doing?" Numbuh 108 said.

"Trying to stop them!" Mark said, looking back to the Half-Fusions. "Do you even realize what you're doing? Do you even know what you're going to do? **WE'RE YOUR FRIENDS! YOUR TEAMMATES, IF YOU PREFER! YOU'RE KND AGENTS! NOT FUSIONS! COME BACK TO YOUR SENSES BEFORE YOU DO SOMETHING THAT YOU'LL REGRET FOREVER!**"

"SUBJECTS! IGNORE THEM!" Fusion Mandark screamed, but the Half-Fusions continued listening to Mark.

"Evan!" Mark said, looking at Evan. "I'm your best friend! If you kill us, you'll have lost him forever! **DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THAT TO YOUR FRIENDS? ALL OF YOU, DO YOU WANT TO KILL YOUR BEST FRIENDS AND GREATEST COMMANDERS?"**

The Half-Fusions stared at Mark for a second, and then they turned to the Fusions. After a short silence, Evan said,

"I can't kill my best friend... not even under your orders!"

Right after Evan had spoken, all of the Half-Fusions brought out their weapons and started firing at the Fusions. Multi-colored explosions took up the lab, and Tech Drones began exploding here and there. The Fusions were in shock at this sudden rebellion of the Half-Fusions, and they were so panicked they started fighting back too.

In the midst of all of the chaos, Evan then ran to the main control panel, and took out what looked like a modified NERF pistol where the bullets in the barrels were replaced with incredibly sharp crayons of all colors. He then fired it at all of the wires and buttons, causing sparks and small explosions of multiple colors.

As the control panel burst into flames, alarms began to go off, and a voice that sounded like a dark version of Computress said,

"_**CONTROL PANEL MALFUNCTION! ALL MAJOR FUNCTIONS OFFLINE!" **_

Mark smiled at the mention of that, and saw the group of NanoComs sitting in a containment field, which had also opened. As the containment fields lowered and flickered, Mark saw a straight path to the NanoComs,. When the containment fields completely turned off, Mark and the others made a beeline for their NanoComs, protected by the Half-Fusions, dodging shots of plasma here and there.

When Mark got his correct NanoCom on, he immediately messaged Numbuh Two and Buttercup, "The shields are down! You can attack now!"

"Got it!" Mark heard Numbuh Two and Buttercup say in unity over the NanoCom. Immediately afterwards, Mark looked into his inventory to his secret unnoticed weapon, the Lightning Sword he still kept, but... wait! It was gone!

Mark saw Evan running up to him, now no longer a Half-Fusion. Mark looked past him and saw that Rex was curing all of the Half-Fusions. Then Mark noticed the crimson scar going through his left eye.

"Uh... let me heal that," Mark said, as he took out his Buttercup nano. As if the Buttercup nano could read Mark's mind, she screamed, and a bright light shined out of Evan's eyes. His scar began to heal and turn into a simple scar going through an eye Evan wouldn't be able to open.

"Thanks, dude," Evan said. "That Buttercup nano has now saved BOTH our lives now. Anyway, was I seriously a Half-Fusion?"

"Yep," Mark responded.

Evan looked slightly amused, before saying, "Don't worry about your weapons, I've got a spare Crayon Cannon."

Evan tossed an extra Crayon Cannon to Mark, and when Mark saw a pair of Air Drones coming at him, he quickly saw an Air Drone coming at him. When he blasted the Crayon Cannon at one of them, huge bangs flew around the room, the Air Drones was pierced, sparks flew, and splashes of Fusion Matter and liquid crayon covered the Air Drone, before it fell to the ground. Not long after, crayons suddenly reappeared in the barrel of the Crayon Cannon.

"Sweet," Mark said, before he suddenly heard a loud sound that sounded like a giant chunk of metal being ripped away. He turned around and saw that Buttercup had ripped the entire back wall of the control room out, and was now attacking all the Fusion Monsters in the room. But Fusion Mandark took out some special laser gun and smiled, as if he expected Buttercup to arrive. Then he fired some kind of glowing particle beam at Buttercup, which stopped her in midair. Then black particles zoomed out of Buttercup and into the gun.

After this occurred, Buttercup fell to the floor. Mark and Dee Dee, not knowing why, ran to her while blasting Air Drones and Tech Drones out of the way. When he reached her and asked what happened, Buttercup said,

"My Chemical X has been absorbed! I can't use any of my powers!"

"Well, we should get you out of here then!" Mark said, but Buttercup reluctantly disagreed, because she said, "NO! I STILL WANT TO FIGHT!"

"Buttercup! We have to get you out! How would you want to die: Powerless, or in a brave, heroic way with your super-powers, like your sisters did? They wouldn't want you to die like this!"

Buttercup pondered what Mark said for a few seconds, before saying, "Yeah, let's get out of here!" Then the three ran for the arriving SCAMPER forces, which were blasting down all the outdoor turrets. Mark could tell this was happening because pieces of metal that looked like turrets were falling from the walls above.

As Buttercup and Dee Dee got onto one of the SCAMPERS, more KND agents appeared to assist them. When Mark turned to his left, he could see Evan and Numbuh 108 battling Fusion Dee Dee. Fusion Mandark was trying to get rid of the Chemical X by dumping it into this liquid called "ANTIDOTE X", which caused a chemical reaction that began depleting both of the fluids. Right after Fusion Mandark poured the Chemical X in, his hand was blasted by Mark's Crayon Cannon. The beaker flew through the air and shattered into pieces as it hit the floor.

Fusion Mandark grinned and cackled, before saying, "You are such a fool, Mark. Your calling Buttercup has allowed us to remove and eradicate all of her Chemical X. SHE WILL NEVER HAVE HER POWERS AGAIN- AAAAH!"

Evan had blasted Fusion Mandark with his Crayon Cannon. "Shut... up."

Fusion Mandark looked angrily at Evan, before calling Fusion Dee Dee. After Mark started blasting Fusion Mandark with his Crayon Cannon, Fusion Dee Dee suddenly front-flipped in between Fusion Mandark and the three, did a quick ballerina spin toward Mark, and sent Mark flying with a swift kick.

Mark hit the metal floor below the platform with a thud, and quickly got up, an ache in his back from hitting the floor. When Mark saw a sudden green streak of light that was screaming fly past his vision, a white flash occurred, and suddenly Mark didn't feel any pain at all. Mark knew it was his Buttercup nano that was likely flying all around the room doing her Rallying Cry move, so he quickly jumped on the platform and brought out his Numbuh Two nano.

"LET'S GET 'EM!" the Numbuh Two nano said before flying toward Fusion Mandark, but the Fusion saw him coming and quickly caught him and held him tight. He turned to Mark and said,

"Oh, Mark, if only you knew how ignorant you are about us," Fusion Mandark said before throwing the Numbuh Two nano back at Mark. Confused, Mark put his Numbuh Two nano back in his NanoCom before running to Evan and Numbuh 108 as they momentarily retreated.

"How was the Fusion able to overpower my nano?" Mark said, wanting answers.

"Oh, yeah," Evan said. "I should've told you this earlier. You see, there are three types of Fusion Matter: Adaptium, Blastons and Cosmix. Fusion Monsters or Nanos with an Adaptium type will quickly adapt to different environments. If their type is Blastons, their Fusion Matter is made out of sub-atomic particles with lots of energy. If their type is Cosmix, they radiate an invisible gas that has strange properties."

"Ah, so that's what I saw in the type description," Mark said, before continuing, "Well, how do I know what type my Nanos or the Fusions are?"

"You can tell what type your Nano is when it comes out or when you first get it. If red light flashes when your Nano comes out, it's a Blastons. If blue light flashes, it's Adaptium. If yellow flashes out, it's Cosmix."

Mark kinda understood what they were saying now, but he wanted more answers, so he then asked, "What about Fusions?"

"If you use the "Type Scanner" in the "MISC" menu of your NanoCom, the Fusions will glow a specific color on the scanner, and the color will depend on the type."

"Got it," Mark said as he got up and pressed "TYPE SCANNER" on his NanoCom. A screen suddenly popped up, and the entire battle scene changed. The Tech Drones were Blastons, the Air Drones were Cosmix, and the Tech Queens were Adaptium. Fusion Dee Dee was Blastons, and Fusion Mandark was Cosmix. Mark then checked his Nano List, and realized that his Buttercup nano was Blastons, and that his Numbuh Two nano was Adaptium.

Mark turned back to Evan and Numbuh 108 and said, "Is there anything else I need to know?"

"Yes," Evan said. "Each type have specific advantages and disadvantages against the other types"

"Basically, it works like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors," Numbuh 108 said. "Adaptium beats Blastons, Blastons beats Cosmix, and Cosmix beats Adaptium."

"OK, I think I know now," Mark said before he summoned both his Buttercup and Numbuh Two nanos. "OK, guys, I have a plan. Nano Numbuh Two, go for Fusion Dee Dee, and Nano Buttercup, you go for Fusion Mandark after sealing the entrances the Fusion Monsters keep coming through. Weaken both the Fusions as I help the others take out the rest of the Fusion Monsters. Then we'll subdue them."

"Got it," the two Nanos said together, before both of them took off. When Mark turned, he could see that the holes in the ceiling the Fusion Monsters kept coming from were now sealed with metal, and the Tech Drones could not get through.

"WATCH OUT! TECH QUEEN WIDOWS HAVE GOT IN THE ROOM!" Mark heard Numbuh Five yell. Another shot of plasma flied past Mark's head, and he turned to his right and saw that at least five gigantic Tech Queens had made it into the room from the giant tear Buttercup had made in the back wall. Mark was intimidated at first, but after realizing all he had been through, he quickly jumped on one of the giant Tech Queens' heads, brought out his Crayon Cannon, and blasted its head repeatedly. As the Tech Queen Widow collapsed, all the Fusion Matter in the Tech Queen Widow slid away, into small cracks in the floor. Mark wondered if he could quickly make armor out of the metal pieces of Tech Queen Widow, but he knew it would take forever. Maybe he could make some when he got back...

Mark repeated the same process with all the others, and once nearly got his arm sliced off, but he managed to defeat all of the Tech Queen Widows, and even kill a few Tech Drones and Air Drones at the same time. When he saw only a few Tech Drones and Air Drones remained, while Mark's Nanos were beating up the Fusions, Mark blasted his Crayon Cannon at a Tech Drone below him in mid-air, before crushing its metallic head as he landed.

"You're something, Mark!" Numbuh Five said, as Mark pierced the thorax of a Tech Drone with his Crayon Cannon, then picked up one of the Tech Queen Widow's claws.

"Yeah..." Mark said. "Even I amaze myself sometimes-" (he threw the Tech Queen Widow's severed claw at an Air Drone, causing it to explode) "-Like now, I guess."

When Mark looked around, he saw that all of the Fusion soldiers were dead, and the room was at least 3 inches deep in Fusion Matter, and Fusion Dee Dee and Fusion Mandark were being held in mid-air by Mark's Nanos.

"Let's have it end with a bang," Mark asked as he turned to Numbuh Five. "Like a... firing squad."

Numbuh Five nodded, and held up her left hand. All of the KND agents knew what she meant, and pointed all their laser-guns and crayon guns and teddy bear guns and other types of guns at the two Fusions. Numbuh Five smiled, thrusted her hand down, and yelled,

**"FIRE!"**

Suddenly, hundreds of energy blasts, teddy bears and crayons flew at the two Fusions, bombarding them with explosions and super-fast objects. Multi-colored Fusion Matter, sparks, and pieces of fluff flew across the room, and seconds after the order to fire was given, Fusion Mandark and Fusion Dee Dee could not take all the projectiles, and they collapsed to the floor.

"Fine... we give up..." Fusion Mandark and Fusion Dee Dee said in unity, before they turned into huge puddles of Fusion Matter, and one object formed formed from each puddle. A sort of doll rose from one of the puddles, and a pair of broken glasses rose from the other.

A message suddenly came up on both Numbuh 108 and Evan's NanoComs. It said the same thing Mark had seen on his NanoCom before he got his Numbuh Two nano. They clicked "YES" on their NanoComs, and the Fusion Matter puddles began to rise into spheres, with their respective items in the center. Both of the spheres began to glow red, and after flashes of lights and pulses of energy, two Nanos emerged: A Dee Dee nano and a Mandark nano. When the Mandark nano looked around, he screamed,

"WHAT HAVE YOU ALL DONE TO MY LAB? ANSWER!"

Not long after everyone shrugged in response, The Dee Dee nano turned to the Mandark nano and screamed, before going into Numbuh 108's NanoCom. Mandark was first confused, then smiled before saying,

"She's just playing hard-to-get, I know it..."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it," Evan said, before summoning the Mandark nano back into Mark's NanoCom. Mark, however burst into laughter.

"No offense, but... you're kidding, right?" Mark said. "Mandark likes... her?"

"Sadly, yes," Numbuh Two said. After hearing that, Mark kinda understood why Mandark was attracted to Dee Dee, and Mark didn't blame him. They were way out of each other's leagues, of course, so he quickly dismissed the subject from his mind.

Suddenly, Mark heard what sounded like splashing and running, and when Mark turned around, he saw a short, bald-looking Fusion in a red T-Shirt, blue jeans, and purple shoes, running to the exit.

"GET HIM!" Mark yelled, as a barrage of colored crayons flew past him and into the Fusion, knocking the Fusion down, causing him to fall and drop some kind of needle. The Fusion quickly picked it up and injected himself with it, and a yellow gas began to appear in it not long afterward.

"He's draining his Cosmix energy!" Numbuh 108 said as they ran to the Fusion. When they got to him, they grabbed what the Fusion had taken from himself. The Fusion merely laughed, however.

"_Before I retreat back to Lord Fuse, you should know one thing: You are ALL gullible. So very gullible. You believe something so easily, that you attack the completely wrong Fusion based on an unclear bit of evidence that people would normally investigate. This plan has been overlooked by Fuse the entire time..."_

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" Mark shouted.

"_Well, I asked Fuse permission for this plan... and when he agreed, I spoke to Fusion Numbuh Two about the plan... and the letter I wanted him to write. After he captured Numbuh 108, he shipped her off to our lair, and we used special voice changers in Pokey Oaks to make a Fusion voice sound like Numbuh 108's. We wanted you to be tricked into coming to Pokey Oaks to stop Fusion Numbuh Two, only to be attacked anyway. So that sting of yours, Mark... would never have happened if your leaders weren't so rushed..._

"_After we captured Numbuh 108, we hypnotized her into thinking that the Treehouse would collapse on February 20th, but we postponed it. But you should have easily realized: WHY WOULD WE REVEAL OUR PLANS TO A CAPTURED AGENT, AND PURPOSELY RELEASE HER? Come on, even I'm not that stupid, unlike you guys, which are!_

"_And now that our plan has been somewhat successful... your army has now been diminished by hundreds... you will soon lose to us... Prepare..."_

The Fusion Matter then leaked onto the floor, and it began to rise on its own, and began to form a Nano, but the problem was: Mark didn't click anything on his NanoCom. After the pulsating rings and bright white flashes, Mark saw... a blob of Fusion Matter in the shape of a nano? Mark called it back anyway.

"Numbuh Two!" Mark heard Numbuh 25 say. When Mark turned to the exit, he saw that Numbuh 25 and the other scout team members were carrying multiple energy devices, and a bunch of dark red flexible steel. "We've got the time machine materials!"

"Yes! This is great! Bring it on board the SCAMPERs now!" Numbuh Two said. "Mark! We now have all the materials needed to build the time machine. All we need now is a massive source of energy and two time-travel artifacts!"

"Yep, we're finally able to start our project for real!" Mark said. "Now let's get out of here..."

And with that, the group got on the SCAMPER, which then took off to Sector V, where the KND forces there would be celebrating their victory when they returned. And then they could finally get on to building the time machine, and send Mark to the past.

_Unknown location __  
_

"A pit sealed by Fusion Matter... energy surrounding the bottom... a portal to the two planets... that the Dark Lord speaks through..."

A lone, sparking Tech Drone spoke that as he crawled out of the Fusion Matter, and walked up to a stone pit on the small island. A small white fence made a small barrier to one side. When the Tech Drone got close enough, the vines suddenly moved and their tips faced the Tech Drone. A booming, spine-tingling voice came out of them as they opened:

"What is it, messenger?" the voice asked. "Do you bear news?"

"My Lord!" the Tech Drone squealed. "Yes, I bear bad news, much to our dismay. Genius Grove has fallen to the enemy! The Mark Emeron that Fusion Eddy mentioned earlier is more powerful than we thought! If we continue at our normal pace of infection, they might be able to take back their land entirely, and possibly fight back!"

A long pause occurred after the Tech Drone spoke, before Fuse continued, "You are suggesting we speed up our planet's descent?"

"If anything to stop them, yes, My Lord!"

"_You know that just one subject cannot influence __**me**_. _We'll see what we have to do. Right now, investigate the strange energy sources that have appeared on the world, with the other surviving Air Drones."_

"_Yes, my lord," the Tech Drone said, before going back into the pool of Fusion Matter. As the Tech Drone left, Fuse knew that this "Mark Emeron" was a threat, and that he would have to be eliminated. But deep down, he's just a boy... right?_

* * *

**Well, there you go! Now with that chapter done, I'll probably have to go on yet another long break! Why? Well, real life and stuff, such as projects. I'll probably be able to upload the next chapter around next Friday (The Friday after this Friday), likely. I guess I'll see you then!**


End file.
